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=fa .
^titotn Cfmrd) of
(Sraal
Hegentis anD
tfje
Considered in their Affinity with Certain Mysteries
of Initiation and other Traces of a Secret
Tradition in Christian Times
BY
ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE
sanctum mfanit, foel sanctum facit
LONDON
REBMAN LIMITED
129 SHAFTESBURY AVENUE, W.C.
1909
fti
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON 6^ Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
PREFACE
IF deeper pitfalls are laid by anything more than by the
facts of coincidence, it is perhaps by the intimations and
suggestions of writings which bear, or are held to bear,
on their surface the seals of allegory and, still more, of
dual allusion ; as in the cases of coincidence, so in these,
it is necessary for the historical student to stand zealously
on his guard and not to acknowledge second meaning
or claims implied, however plausible, unless they are
controlled and strengthened by independent evidence.
Even with this precaution, his work will remain anxious,
for the lineal path is difficult to find and follow. Per-
haps there is one consolation offered by the gentle life
of letters. In matters of interpretation, if always to
succeed is denied us, to have deserved it is at least
something.
Among our aids there is one aid which arises from the
correspondences between distinct systems of allegory and
symbolism. They are important within their own sphere ;
and it is by subsidiary lights of this nature that research
can be directed occasionally into new tracks, from which
unexpected and perhaps indubitable results may be
derived ultimately. When the existence of a secondary
and concealed meaning seems therefore inferentially
certain in a given department of literature — if ordinary
processes, depending on evidence of the external kind,
have been found wanting — its purpose and intention may
be ascertained by a comparison with other secret litera-
tures, which is equivalent to saying that the firmest
hermeneutical ground in such cases must be sought in
evidence which inheres and is common to several depart-
Preface
ments of cryptic writing. It is in this way that the
prepared mind moves through the world of criticism
as through outward worlds of discovery.
I am about to set forth after a new manner, and
chiefly for the use of English mystics, the nature of the
mystery which is enshrined in the old romance-literature
of the Holy Graal. As a literature it can be approached
from several standpoints ; and at the root it has a direct
consanguinity with other mysteries, belonging to the
more secret life of the soul. I propose to give a very
full account of all the considerations which it involves,
the imperfect speculations included of some who have
preceded me in the same path — writers whose interests
at a far distance are not utterly dissimilar to my own,
though their equipment has been all too slight. I shall
endeavour to establish at the end that there are certain
things in transcendence which must not be sought in the
literature, and yet they arise out of it. The task will
serve, among several objects, two which may be put
on record at the moment — on the one hand, and quite
obviously, to illustrate the deeper intimations of Graal
literature, and, on the other, certain collateral intimations
which lie behind the teachings of the great churches and
are, in the official sense, as if beyond, their ken. Of such
intimations is all high seership. The task itself has been
undertaken as the initial consequence of several first-hand
considerations. If I note this fact at so early a stage as
the preface, it is because of the opportunity which it gives
me to make plain, even from the beginning, that I hold no
warrant to impugn preconceived judgments, as such, or,
as such, to set out in search of novelties. In my own
defence it will be desirable to add that I have not written
either as an enthusiast or a partisan, though in honour to
my school there are great dedications to which I must
confess with my heart. On the historical side there is
much and very much in which some issues of the evi-
dence, on production, will be found to fall short of demon-
stration, and, so far as this part is concerned, I offer it at
vi
Treface
its proper worth. On the symbolical side, and on that
of certain implicits, it is otherwise, and my thesis to those
of my school will, I think, come not only with a strong
appeal, but as something which is conclusive within its
own lines. I should add that, rather than sought out,
the undertaking has been imposed through a familiarity
with analogical fields of symbolism, the correspondences
of which must be unknown almost of necessity to students
who have not passed through the secret schools of
thought.
It will be intelligible from these statements that it has
not been my purpose to put forward the analogies which I
have established as a thesis for the instruction of scholar-
ship, firstly, because it is concerned with other matters
which are important after their own kind, and, secondly,
as I have already intimated, because I am aware that a par-
ticular equipment is necessary for their full appreciation,
and this, for obvious reasons, is not found in the consti-
tuted or authorised academies of official research. My
own investigation is designed rather for those who are
already acquainted with some part at least of the hidden
knowledge, who have been concerned with the study of its
traces through an interest proper to themselves — in other
words, for those who have taken their place within the
sanctuary of the mystic life, or at least in its outer
circles.
In so far as I have put forward my thesis under the
guidance of the sovereign reason, I look for the recogni-
tion of scholarship, which in its study of the literature
has loved the truth above all things, though its particular
form of appreciation has led it rather to dedicate especial
zeal to a mere demonstration that the literature of the
Graal has its basis in a cycle of legend wherein there is
neither a Sacred Vessel nor a Holy Mystery. This not-
withstanding, there is no scholar now living in England
whose conditional sympathy at least I may not expect to
command from the beginning, even though I deal ulti-
mately with subjects that are beyond the province in which
vii
Preface
folk-lore societies can adjudicate, and in which they have
earned such high titles of honour.
After accepting every explanation of modern erudition
as to the origin of the Graal elements, there remain various
features of the romances as things outside the general
horizon of research, and they are those which, from rny
standpoint, are of the last and most real importance. A
scheme of criticism which fails to account for the claim
to a super-valid formula of Eucharistic consecration and
to a super-apostolical succession accounts for very little
that matters finally. I have therefore taken up the sub-
ject at the point where it has been left by the students of
folk-lore and all that which might term itself authorised
scholarship. Ut adeptis appareat me illis parem et fratrem,
I have made myself acquainted with the chief criticism
of the cycle, and I have explored more than one curious
tract which is adjacent to the cycle itself. It is with the
texts, however, that I am concerned only, and I approach
them from a new standpoint. As to this, it will be better
to specify from the outset some divisions of my scheme
as follows : ( i ) The appropriation of certain myths and
legends which are held to be pre-Christian in the origin
thereof, and their penetration by an advanced form of
Christian Symbolism carried to a particular term ; (2) the
evidence of three fairly distinct sections or schools, the
diversity of which is not, however, in the fundamental part
of their subject, but more properly in the extent and mode
of its development ; (3) the connection of this mode and
of that part with other schools of symbolism, the evolu-
tion of which was beginning at the same period as that of
the Graal literature or followed thereon ; (4) the close
analogy, in respect of the root-matter, between the catholic
literature of the Holy Graal and that which is connoted in
the term mysticism; (5) the traces through Graal romance
and other coincident literatures of a hidden school in Chris-
tianity. The Graal romances are not documents of this
school put forward by the external way, but are its
rumours at a far distance. They are not authorised, nor
viii
^Preface
are they stolen ; they have arisen, or the consideration
of that which I understand with reserves, and for want
of a better title, as the Hidden Church of Sacramental
Mystery follows from their consideration as something in
the intellectual order connected therewith. The offices
of romance are one thing, and of another order are the
high mysteries of religion — if a statement so obvious can
be tolerated. There are, of course, religious romances,
and the Spanish literature of chivalry furnishes a notable
instance of a sacred allegorical intention which reposes on
the surface of the sense, as in the Pilgrim s Progress.
Except in some isolated sections, as, for example, in
the Galahad Quest and the Longer Prose Perceval, the
cycle of the Holy Graal does not move in the region
of allegory, but in that of concealed intention, and it is
out of this fact that there arises my whole inquiry, with
the justification for the title which I have chosen. The
existence of a concealed sanctuary, of a Hidden Church, is
perhaps the one thing which seems plain on the face of the
literature, and the next fact is that it was pre-eminent,
ex hypothesis in its possession of the most sacred memorials
connected with the passion of Christ. It was from the
manner in which these were derived that the other claims
followed. The idea of a Graal Church has been faintly
recognised by official scholarship, and seeing, therefore,
that there is a certain common ground, the question which
transpires for consideration is whether there is not a
deeper significance in the claim, and whether we are deal-
ing with mere legend or with the rumours at a distance
of that which " once in time and somewhere in the world "
was actually existent, under whatever veils of mystery.
Following this point of view, it is possible to collect out
of the general body of the literature what I should term
its intimations of sub-surface meaning into a brief schedule
as follows : (#) The existence of a clouded sanctuary ;
(£) a great mystery ; (c) a desirable communication
which, except under certain circumstances, cannot take
place ; (d} suffering within and sorcery without, being
ix
Preface
pageants of the mystery ; (e) supernatural grace which
does not possess efficacy on the external side ; (/) healing
which comes from without, sometimes carrying all the
signs of insufficiency and even of inhibition ; (^) in fine,
that which is without enters and takes over the charge of
the mystery, but it is either removed altogether or goes
into deeper concealment — the outer world profits only
by the abrogation of a vague enchantment.
The unversed reader may not at the moment follow
the specifics of this schedule, yet if the allusions awaken
his interest I can promise that they shall be made
plain in proceeding. But as there is no one towards
whom I shall wish to exercise more frankness than the
readers to whom I appeal, it will be a counsel of courtesy
to inform them that scholarship has already commented
upon the amount of mystic nonsense which has been
written on the subject of the Graal. Who are the
mystic people and what is the quality of their nonsense
does not appear from the statement, and as entirely out-
side mysticism there has been assuredly an abundance of
unwise speculation, including much of the heretical and
occult order, I incline to think that the one has been
taken for the other by certain learned people who
have not been too careful about the limits of the par-
ticular term to which they have had recourse so lightly.
After precisely the same manner, scholarship speaks
of the ascetic element in the Graal literature almost as
if it were applying a term of reproach, and, again, it is
not justified by reasonable exactitude in the use of words.
Both impeachments, the indirect equally with the overt,
stand for what they are worth, which is less than
the solar mythology applied to the interpretation of
the literature. My object in mentioning these grave
trifles is that no one at a later stage may say that he has
been entrapped.
It is indubitable that some slight acquaintance with
the legends of the Holy Graal can be presupposed in my
readers, but in many it may be so unsubstantial that
Preface
I have concluded to assume nothing, except that, as
indicated already, I am addressing those who are con-
cerned with the Great Quest in one of its departments.
There is no reason why they should extend their dedi-
cated field of thought by entering into any technical
issues of subjects outside those with which they may
be concerned already. I have returned from investiga-
tions of my own, with a synopsis of the results attained,
to show them that the literature of the Holy Graal is of
kinship with our purpose and that this also is ours.
The Graal is, therefore, a rumour of the Mystic Quest,
but there were other rumours.
In order to simplify the issues, all the essential
materials have been so grouped that those for whom the
bulk of the original works is, by one or other reason,
either partially or wholly sealed, may attain, in the first
place, an accurate and sufficing knowledge of that which
the several writers of the great cycles understood by the
Graal itself, and that also which was involved in the quests
thereof according to the mind of each successive expositor.
I have sought, in the second place, to furnish an adequate
conversance with the intention, whether manifest or con-
cealed, which has been attributed to the makers of the
romances by numerous students of these in various
countries and times. In the third place there is presented,
practically for the first time — pace all strictures of scholiasts
—the mystic side of the legend, and with this object it
has been considered necessary to enter at some length
into several issues, some of which may seem at first sight
extrinsic. In pursuance of my general plan I have en-
deavoured in various summaries : (#) To compare the
implied claim of the Graal legends with the Eucharistic
doctrine at the period of the romances ; (<£) to make it
clear, by the evidence of the literature, that the Graal
Mystery, in the highest sense of its literature, was one of
supernatural life and a quest of high perfection ; (c) to
show, in a word, that, considered as a mystery of illumina-
tion and even of ecstasy, the Graal does not differ from
xi
'Preface
the great traditions of initiation. Whatever, therefore,
be the first beginnings of the literature, in the final
development it is mystic rather than ascetic, because it
does not deal with the path of detachment so much as
with the path of union.
It must be acknowledged assuredly that the first
matter of the legend is found in folk-lore, antecedent,
for the most part, to Christianity in the West, exactly as
the first matter of the cosmos was in the TOHU, BOHU
of chaos ; but my purpose is to show that its elements
were taken over in the interest of a particular form
of Christian religious symbolism. That advancement
notwithstanding, the symbolism at this day needs re-ex-
pression as well as the informing virtue of a catholic
interpretation, showing how the Graal and all other
traditions which have become part of the soul's legends
can be construed in the true light of mystic know-
ledge.
I have demonstrated at the same time that among the
romancers, and especially the poets, some spoke from
very far away of things whereof they had heard only,
and this darkly, so that the characteristic of the Graal
legend is, for this reason, as on other accounts, one of in-
sufficiency. Yet its writers testify by reflection, even when
they accept the sign for the thing signified and confuse
the flesh with the spirit, to a certain measure of know-
ledge and a certain realisation. It is only in its mystic
sense that the Graal literature can repay study. All
great subjects bring us back to the one subject which
is alone great ; all high quests end in the spiritual city ;
scholarly criticisms, folk-lore and learned researches are
little less than useless if they fall short of directing us to
our true end — and this is the attainment of that centre
which is about us everywhere. It is in such a way, and so
only, that either authorised scholar or graduating student
can reach those things which will recompense knowledge
concerning the vision and the end in Graal literature, as
it remains to us in the forms which survive — in which
xii
'Preface
forms the mystery of the Holy Cup has been passed
through the mind of romance and has been deflected like
a staff in a pool.
I conclude, therefore, that the spirit of the Holy Quest
may be as much with us in the study of the literature of
the Quest as if we were ourselves adventuring forth in
search of the Graai Castle, the Chalice, the Sword and
the Lance. Herein is the consecrating motive which
moves through the whole inquiry. So also the mystery
of quest does not differ in its root-matter, nor consider-
ably in its external forms, wherever we meet it ; there are
always certain signs by which we may recognise it and
may know its kinship. It is for this reason that the
school of Graal mysticism enters, and that of necessity,
into the great sequence of grades which constitute the
unified Mystic Rite.
If there was a time when the chaos magna et infirmata of
the old un- Christian myths was transformed and assumed
into a heaven of the most holy mysteries, there comes
a time also when the criticism of the literature which
enshrines the secret of the Graal has with great
deference to be taken into other sanctuaries than those
of official scholarship ; when some independent watcher,
having stood by the troubled waters of speculation, must
either say : " Peace, be still " ; or, indifferently, " Let them
rave" — and, putting up a certain beacon in the darkness,
must signal to those who here and there are either
acquainted with his warrants by certain signs, which they
recognise, or can divine concerning them, and must say to
them : "Of this is also our inheritance."
So much as I have here advanced will justify, I think,
one further act of sincerity. I have no use for any audience
outside my consanguinities in the spirit. As Newton's
Principia is of necessity a closed book to those who have
fallen into waters of confusion at the pons asinorum of
children — and as this is not an impeachment of the
Principia — so my construction of the Graal literature will
not be intelligible, or scarcely, to those who have not
xiii
Treface
graduated in some one or other of the academies of the
soul ; it is not for children in the elementary classes
of thought, but in saying this I do not impeach the
construction. The Principia did not make void the
elements of Euclid. I invite them only for their per-
sonal relief to close the book at this point before it
closes itself against them.
I conclude by saying that the glory of God is the
purpose of all my study, and that in His Name I
undertake this quest as a part of the Great Work.
xiv
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
BOOK I
THE ROOTS OF THE HOUSE OF MEANING
SECT.
I. SOME ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND ... 5
II. EPOCHS OF THE LEGEND. 12
III. THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE GRAAL LITERATURE . 17
IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE CYCLE .... 47
V. THE IMPLICITS OF THE GRAAL MYSTERY . 61
BOOK II
MTSTERIES OF THE HOLT GRAAL IN MANI-
FESTATION AND REMOVAL
I. A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN ROOT-SECRETS
INCLUDED IN THE WHOLE SUBJECT ... 79
II. THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOWS, AND, IN THE
FIRST PLACE, A GENERAL INTRODUCTION CON-
CERNING THEM 84
III. THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOWS, AND, SECONDLY,
THE VARIATIONS OF THE CUP LEGEND . . 89
IV. THE GRAAL VESSEL CONSIDERED AS A BOWL OF
PLENTY 104
V. THE LESSER HALLOWS OF THE LEGEND . . .114
(a) The Summary of these Matters ; (b) Legends of the Sacred
Lance ; (c) The Broken Sword ; (d) The Dish.
VI. THE CASTLE OF THE HOLY GRAAL . . . .128
VII. THE KEEPERS OF THE HALLOWS . . . .134
VIII. THE PAGEANTS IN THE QUESTS . . . .138
xv
Contents
SECT. PAGE
IX. THE ENCHANTMENTS OF BRITAIN, THE TIMES CALLED
ADVENTUROUS AND THE WOUNDING OF THE
KING 144
X. THE SUPPRESSED WORD AND THE MYSTIC QUESTION 152
XI. THE HEALING OF THE KING 157
XII. THE REMOVAL OF THE HALLOWS . . . 161
BOOK III
THE EARLY EPOCHS OF THE QUEST
I. THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE LEGEND IN FOLK-LORE . 171
II. THE WELSH PERCEVAL 181
III. THE ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCE OF SYR PERCY-
VELLE 193
IV. THE CONTE DEL GRAAL 198
(a) Preliminary to the whole Subject ; (b) The Poem of Chretien
de Troyes ; (c) The Extension of Gautier ; (d) The Con-
clusion of Manessier ; (e] The Alternative Sequel of
Gerbert ; (/) In which Sir Gawain is considered briefly
as a Companion of the Holy Quest.
BOOK IV
THE LESSER CHRONICLES OF THE HOLT GRAAL
I. THE METRICAL ROMANCE OF JOSEPH OF ARIMATH^A 245
II. THE LESSER HOLY GRAAL 255
III. THE EARLY HISTORY OF MERLIN .... 258
IV. THE DIDOT PERCEVAL 265
BOOK V
THE GREATER CHRONICLES OF THE HOLT GRAAL
I. THE BOOK OF THE HOLY GRAAL, AND, IN THE FIRST
PLACE, THE PROLOGUE THERETO BELONGING . 281
II. A NEW CONSIDERATION CONCERNING THE BRANCHES
OF THE CHRONICLE 287
xvi
Contents
SECT. PAGE
III. THE MINOR BRANCHES OF THE BOOK OF THE HOLY
GRAAL ........ 308
IV. SOME LATER MERLIN LEGENDS . . . .316
(a) The Vulgate Merlin ; (b) The Huth Merlin.
V. THE GREAT PROSE LANCELOT 330
VI. A PREFACE OR INTRODUCTORY PORTION APPERTAINING
TO ALL THE QUESTS . . . . . . 340
VII. THE LONGER PROSE PERCEVAL 344
VIII. THE QUEST OF THE HIGH PRINCE .... 352
IX. THE WELSH QUEST OF GALAHAD .... 365
BOOK VI
THE GERMAN CYCLE OF THE HOLT GRAAL
I. THE PARSIFAL OF WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH . 375
II. GLEANINGS CONCERNING THE LOST QUEST OF GUIOT
DE PROVENCE ....... 397
III. SIDELIGHTS FROM THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE
QUESTS 404
IV. THE CROWN OF ALL ADVENTURES . . . .407
V. THE TITUREL OF ALBRECHT VON SCHARFENBERG . 415
VI. THE DUTCH LANCELOT 421
BOOK VII
THE HOLT GRAAL IN THE LIGHT OF THE
CELTIC CHURCH
I. STATEMENT OF A POSSIBLE IMPLICIT ACCOUNTING FOR
ALL CLAIMS 433
II. THE FORMULA OF THE HYPOTHESIS SCHEDULED . 436
III. IN WHAT SENSE THE PLEA MUST BE HELD TO FAIL . 446
IV. THE VICTORY OF THE LATIN RITE . . . -459
xvii b
Contents
BOOK VIII
MYSTIC ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND
SECT. PAGE
I. THE INTRODUCTORY WORDS 469
II. THE POSITION OF THE LITERATURE DEFINED . .476
III. CONCERNING THE GREAT EXPERIMENT . . .481
IV. THE MYSTERY OF INITIATION 488
V. THE MYSTERY OF FAITH 493
VI. THE LOST BOOK OF THE GRAAL .... 498
VII. THE DECLARED MYSTERY OF QUEST. . . . 507
BOOK IX
SECRET TRADITION IN CHRISTIAN TIMES
I. PRELIMINARY TO THE WHOLE SUBJECT . . .521
II. SOME ALLEGED SECRET SCHOOLS OF THE MIDDLE AGES 524
III. THE LATIN LITERATURE OF ALCHEMY AND THE HER-
METIC SECRET IN THE LIGHT OF THE EUCHARISTIC
MYSTERY 533
IV. THE KABALISTIC ACADEMIES ..... 550
V. THE CLAIM IN RESPECT of TEMPLAR INFLUENCE . 555
VI. THE GRAAL FORMULA IN THE LIGHT OF OTHER
GLEANINGS FROM THE CATHOLIC SACRAMENTARY 566
VII. THE Lapis Exilis 571
VIII. THE ANALOGIES OF MASONRY . . . . -576
(a) The Assumption of the Building Guild ; (/>) Masonry and
Moral Science ; (c} A Theory of Hermetic Interference ;
(d) One Key to the Sanctuary.
IX. THE HALLOWS OF THE GRAAL MYSTERY RE-DISCOVERED
IN THE TALISMANS OF THE TAROT . . . 600
BOOK X
THE SECRET CHURCH
I. THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE HOLY GRAAL . .615
II. THE GOOD HUSBANDMAN 620
III. THE CATHOLIC SECRET OF THE LITERATURE . . 626
xviii
Contents
SECT. PAGE
IV. THE MYSTERY WHICH is WITHIN .... 639
V. THE SECLUDED AND UNKNOWN SANCTUARY . . 642
VI. THE TRADITION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE AND OTHER
TRACES OF A HIGHER MIND OF THE CHURCH . 66 1
VII. THE CONCLUSION OF THIS HOLY QUEST . . . 668
APPENDIX
THE BIBLIOGRAPHT OF THE HOLT GRAAL
PART I
THE TEXTS
PART II
SOME CRITICAL WORKS
PART III
PHASES OF INTERPRETATION
xix
BOOK I
THE ROOTS OF THE HOUSE OF MEANING
THE ARGUMENT
Heads of a General Summary of the whole subject, with the
analysis thereof, including: — I. SOME ASPECTS OF THE
GRAAL LEGEND. — The word which came forth out of
Qalilee — The sacramental vessel — Its history and the quests
thereof— The Graal in the books of chivalry — The Graal in
modern poetry — The composite elements of the Legend — The
Graal as a reliquary . II. EPOCHS OF THE LEGEND. — The
higher understanding of the Quest — The outlook of roman-
ticism— The attitude of poetry — The direction of archeology —
The prospect which is called spiritual — The consideration oj
the present thesis — The hidden motives of the literature — Its
critical difficulties — Concerning the interpretation of Books.
III. THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE GRAAL LITERATURE. —
The Catholic Doctrine of the Eucharist — The passage of
Transubstantiation into Dogma — The Cultus of the Precious
Blood — Relics of the Passion, and, in the first place, concern-
ing those of the Precious Blood — The discovery of the Sacro
Catino — The invention of the Lance at Antioch — The Sword of
St. John the Baptist — The state of the Official Church — The
Church in Britain — The Holy Wars of Palestine — The higher
life of Sanctity and its annals in the Graal period — The sects of
the period. IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE CYCLE. — Its
various modes of classification and that mode which is most proper
to the present inquiry — The places of the Graal Legend — The
Welsh Peredur and the English Syr Percyvelle — The Conte
del Graal— The Lesser Chronicles of the Holy Graal — The
3
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Greater Chronicles of the Holy Graal — The German cycle—
The question which is posed for consideration. V. THE
IMPLICITS OF THE GRAAL MYSTERY. — The first considera-
tion concerning a concealed sense of the literature — The Secret
Words of Consecration and what follows therefrom, namely,
that a true Mass has never been said in the world since the
Graal was taken away — The super-apostolical succession, the
peculiar Divine Warrant and ecclesiastical pre-eminence
claimed for the Graal Keepers — That these claims must be
distinguished from errors of doctrinal confusion and theo-
logical ignorance, of which there is evidence otherwise —
That any concealed sense must be held to co-exist with
manifest insufficiency, even within its own province, and
more especially regarding the Eucharist — That there is no
intention to present the Graal Mystery as that of a secret
process at work outside the Church — The Lesser Imp ii cits
of the literature.
BOOK I
THE ROOTS OF THE HOUSE OF MEANING
I
SOME ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND
THE study of a great literature should begin like the
preparation for a royal banquet, not without some
solicitude for right conduct in the King's palace — which
is the consecration of motive — and not without recol-
lection of that source from which the most excellent
gifts derive in their season to us all. We may, there-
fore, in approaching it say : 'Benedic, Domine, nos et h<ec
tua dona, qu<e de tua largitate sumus sumpturi.
But in respect of the subject which concerns us we
may demand even more appropriately : Mens<e ccelestis
participes facial nos, Rex <etern<z gloria. In this way
we shall understand not only the higher meaning of the
Feeding-Dish, but the gift of the discernment of spirits,
the place and office of the supersubstantial bread, and
other curious things of the worlds within and without
of which we shall hear in their order. Surely the
things of earth are profitable to us only in so far as
they assist us towards the things which are eternal.
In this respect there are many helpers, even as the sands
of the sea. The old books help us, perhaps above all
things, and among them the old chronicles and the great
antique legends. If the hand of God is in history, it is
also in folk-lore. We can scarcely fail of our term,
since lights, both close at hand and in the unlooked-for
places, kindle everywhere about us. It is difficult to
say any longer that we walk in the shadow of death
when the darkness is sown with stars.
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Now there are a few legends which may be said to
stand forth among the innumerable traditions of
humanity, wearing the external signs and characters of
some inward secret or mystery which belongs rather to
eternity than to time. They are in no sense connected
one with another — unless, indeed, by certain roots which
are scarcely in time and place — and yet by a suggestion
which is deeper than any message of the senses each
seems appealing to each, one bearing testimony to
another, and all recalling all. They kindle strange
lights, they awaken dim memories, in the antecedence
of an immemorial past. They might be the broken
fragments of some primitive revelation which, except in
these memorials, has passed out of written records and
from even the horizon of the mind. There are also
other legends — strange, melancholy and long haunting—
which seem to have issued from the depths of abori-
ginal humanity, below all horizons of history, pointing,
as we might think, to terrible periods of a past which
is of the body only, not of the soul of man, and
hinting that once upon a time there was a soulless
age of our race, when minds were formless as the
mammoths of geological epochs. To the latter class
belongs part of what remains to us from the folk-lore
of the cave-dwellers, the traditions of the pre-Aryan
races of Europe. To the former, among many others,
belongs the Graal legend, which in all its higher
aspects is to be classed among the legends of the soul.
Perhaps I should more worthily say that when it is
properly understood, and when it is regarded at the
highest, the Graal is not a legend, but an episode in
the aeonian life of that which " cometh from afar";
it is a personal history.
The mystery of the Graal is a word which came
forth out of Galilee. The literature which enshrines
this mystery, setting forth the circumstances of its
origin, the several quests which were instituted on
account of it, the circumstances under which it was
6
The Roots of the House of Meaning
from time to time discovered, and, in fine, its imputed
removal, with all involved thereby, is one of such
considerable dimensions that it may be properly de-
scribed as large. This notwithstanding, there is no
difficulty in presenting its broad outlines, as they are
found in the texts which remain, so briefly that if there
be any one who is new to the subject, he can be in-
structed sufficiently for my purpose even from the
beginning. It is to be understood, therefore, that the
Holy Graal, considered in its Christian aspects and
apart from those of folk-lore, is represented invari-
ably, excepting in one German version of the legend,
as that vessel in which Christ celebrated the Last
Supper or consecrated for the first time the elements
of the Eucharist. It is, therefore, a sacramental vessel,
and, according to the legend, its next use was to receive
the blood from the wounds of Christ when His body
was taken down from the Cross, or, alternatively, from
the side which was pierced by the spear of Longinus.
Under circumstances which are variously recounted,
this vessel, its content included, was carried westward
in safe guardianship — coming, in fine, to Britain and
there remaining in the hands of successive keepers,
or, this failing, in the hands of a single keeper, whose
life was prolonged through the centuries. In the days
of King Arthur, the prophet and magician Merlin
assumed the responsibility of carrying the legend to
its term, with which object he brought about the
institution of the Round Table, and the flower of
Arthurian chivalry set out to find the Sacred Vessel.
In some of the quests which followed, the knighthood
depicted in the greater romances has become a mystery
of ideality, and nothing save its feeble reflection could
have been found on earth. The quests were to some
extent preconceived in the mind of the legend, and,
although a few of them were successful, that which
followed was the removal of the Holy Graal. The
Companions of the Quest asked, as one may say, for
7
"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
bread, and to those who were unworthy there was
given the stone of their proper offence, but to others
the spiritual meat which passes all understanding.
That this account instructs the uninitiated person
most imperfectly will be obvious to any one who is
acquainted with the great body of the literature, but,
within the limits to which I have restricted it inten-
tionally, I do not know that if it were put differently
it would be put better or more in harmony with the
general sense of the romances.
It might appear at first sight almost a superfluous
precaution, even in an introductory part, to reply so
fully as I have now done to the assumed question :
What, then, was the Holy Graal ? Those who are
unacquainted with its literature in the old books of
chivalry, through which it first entered into the
romance of Europe, will know it by the Idylls of
the King. But it is not so superfluous as it seems,
more especially with the class which I am addressing,
since nominally this has other concerns, like folk-lore
scholarship, and many answers to the question made
from distinct points of view would differ from that
which is given by the Knight Perceval to his fellow-
monk in the poem of Tennyson : —
" What is it ?
The phantom of a cup which comes and goes ? —
Nay, monk ! What phantom ? answered Perceval.
The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with his own.
This, from the blessed land of Aromat . . .
Arimathaean Joseph, journeying brought
To Glastonbury. . . .
And there awhile it bode ; and if a man
Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once,
By faith, of all his ills. But then the times
Grew to such evil that the holy cup
Was caught away to Heaven and disappeared."
This is the answer with which, in one or another of
its forms, poetic or chivalrous, every one is expected
8
The Roots of the House of Meaning
to be familiar, or he must be classed as too unlettered
for consideration, even in such a slight sketch as these
introductory words. But it is so little the only answer,
and it is so little full or exhaustive, that no person
acquainted with the archaic literature would accept it
otherwise than as one of its aspects, and even the
enchanting gift of Tennyson's poetic faculty leaves —
and that of necessity — something to be desired in the
summary of the Knight's reply to the direct question
of Ambrosius. Those even who at the present day
discourse of chivalry are not infrequently like those
who say: "Lord, Lord!" — but for all that they do
not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven or the more
secret realms of literature. And this obtains still more
respecting the chivalry of the Graal. In the present
case something of the quintessential spirit has in an
obscure manner evaporated. There is an allusiveness,
a pregnancy, a suggestion about the old legend in its
highest forms : it is met with in the old romances, and
among others in the longer prose chronicle of Perceval
le Gallois, but more fully in the great prose Quest,
which is of Galahad, the haut prince. A touch
of it is found later in Tennyson's own poem, when
Perceval's sister, the nun of " utter whiteness," describes
her vision : —
" I heard a sound
As of a silver horn from o'er the hills. . . .
The slender sound
As from a distance beyond distance grew
Coming upon me. . . .
And then
Stream'd thro* my cell a cold and silver beam,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,
Rose-red with beatings in it."
And again : —
" I saw the spiritual city and all her spires
And gateways in a glory like one pearl. . . .
Strike from the sea ; and from the star there shot
A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there
Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail."
9
"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
So also in the chivalry books the legend is treated with
an aloofness, and yet with a directness of circumstance
and a manifoldness of detail, awakening a sense of
reality amidst enchantment which is scarcely heightened
when the makers of the chronicles testify to the truth
of their story. The explanation is, according to one
version of the legend, that it was written by Christ
Himself after the Resurrection, and that there is no
clerk, however hardy, who will dare to suggest that
any later scripture is referable to the same hand. Sir
Thomas Malory, the last and greatest compiler of the
Arthurian legend, suppresses this hazardous ascription,
and in the colophon of his seventeenth book is contented
with adding that it is <ca story chronicled for one of
the truest and the holyest that is in thys world."
But there is ample evidence no further afield than
Sir Thomas Malory's own book, the Morte cT Arthur,
that the Graal legend was derived into his glorious
codification from various sources, and that some ele-
ments entered into it which are quite excluded by the
description of Sir Perceval in the Idylls or by the
colophon of Malory's own twelfth book, which reads :
" And here foloweth the noble tale of the Sancgreal,
that called is the hooly vessel, and the sygnefycacyon
of the blessid blood of our Lord Jhesu Cryste, blessid
mote it be, the whiche was brought in to this land by
Joseph of Armathye, therefor, on al synful souls
blessid Lord haue thou mercy."
As an equipoise to the religious or sentimental side
of the legend, it is known, and we shall see in its place,
that the Graal cycle took over something from Irish
and Welsh folk-lore of the pagan period concerning a
mysterious magical vessel full of miraculous food. This
is illustrated by the Morte d" Arthur, in the memorable
episode of the high festival held by King Arthur at
Pentecost : in the midst of the supper " there entred in
to the halle the Holy Graal couered with whyte samyte,
but ther was none mighte see hit nor who bare hit. And
10
The Roots of the House of Meaning
there was al the halle fulfylled with good odoures, and
euery knyzt had suche metes and drynkes as he loved best
in this world." That is a state of the legend which has
at first sight little connection with the mystic vessel
carried out of Palestine, whether by Joseph or another,
but either the simple-minded chroniclers of the past
did not observe the anachronism when they married a
Christian mystery to a cycle of antecedent fable, or
there is an explanation of a deeper kind, in which case
we shall meet with it at a later stage of our studies.
For the moment, and as an intimation only, let me say
that the study of folk-lore may itself become a rever-
ence of high research when it is actuated by a condign
motive.
We shall make acquaintance successively with the
various entanglements which render the Graal legend
perhaps the most embedded of all cycles. I have said
that the Sacred Vessel is sacramental in a high degree ;
it connects intimately with the Eucharist ; it is the most
precious of all relics for all Christendom indifferently,
for, supposing that it were manifested at this day, I
doubt whether the most rigid of the Protestant sects
could do otherwise than bow down before it. And
yet, at the same time, the roots of it lie deep in folk-
lore of the pre-Christian period, and in this sense it is
a dish of plenty, with abundance for an eternal festival.
So also, from another point of view, it is not a cup but
a stone, and it would have come never to this earth if
it had not been for the fall of the angels. It is brought
to the West ; it is carried to the East again ; it is assumed
into heaven ; it is given to a company of hermits ; for
all that we know to the contrary, it is at this day in
Northumbria ; it is in the secret temple of a knightly
company among the high Pyrenees; and it is in the
land of Presbyter Johannes. It is like the cup of
the elixir and the stone of transmutation in alchemy
— described in numberless ways and seldom after the
same manner; but it seems to be one thing under its
ii
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
various ways, and blessed are those who find it. We
shall learn, in fine, that the Graal was either a monastic
legend or at least that it was super-monastic — and this
certainly.
II
EPOCHS OF THE LEGEND
A minute inquiry into the materials, and their sources,
of a moving and stately legend is opposed to the pur-
poses and interests of the general reader, though to
him I speak accidentally, and apart from any sense of
election I must in honesty commend him to abstain,
resting satisfied that for him and his consanguinities
the Graal has two epochs only in literature — those of Sir
Thomas Malory and the Idylls of the King. As Tennyson
was indebted to Malory, except for things of his own in-
vention, so it is through his gracious poems that many
people have been sent back to the old book of chivalry from
which he reproduced his motives and sometimes derived
his words. But without entering into the domain of
archaeology, even some ordinary persons, and certainly
the literate reader, will know well enough that there are
branches of the legend, both old and new, outside these two
palmary names, and that some of them are close enough to
their hands. They will be familiar with the Cornish poet
Robert Stephen Hawker, whose " Quest of the San Graal "
has, as Madame de Stael once said of Saint-Martin, " some
sublime gleams." They will have realised that the old
French romance of Perceval le Gallois, as translated into
English of an archaic kind, ever beautiful and stately,
by Dr. Sebastian Evans, is a gorgeous chronicle, full
of richly painted pictures and endless pageants. They
will know also more dimly that there is a German cycle
of the Graal traditions — that Titurel, Parsifal, Lohen-
grin, to whom a strange and wonderful life beyond all
common teachings of Nature, all common conventions
12
The Roots of the House of Meaning
of art, has been given by Wagner, are also legendary
heroes of the Holy Graal. In their transmuted presence
something may have hinted to the heart that the Quest
is not pursued with horses or clothed in outward armour,
but in the spirit along the via mystica.
There are therefore, broadly speaking, three points of
view, outside all expert evidence, as regards the whole
subject, and these are : —
1 i ) The Romantic, and the reversion of literary senti-
ment at the present day towards romanticism will make
it unnecessary to mention that this is now a very strong
point. It is exemplified by the editions of the Morte
d' Arthur produced for students, nor less indeed by
those which have been modified in the interests of
children, and in which a large space is given always to
the Graal legend. Andrew Lang's Book of Romance
and Mary McLeod's Book of King Arthur and his
Noble Knights are instances which will occur to several
people, but there are yet others, and they follow one
another, even to this moment, a shadowy masque,
not excepting, at a far distance, certain obscure and
truly illiterate versions in dim byways of periodical
literature.
(2) The Poetic, and having regard to what has been
said already, I need only for my present purpose affirm
that it has done much to exalt and spiritualise the legend
without removing the romantic element ; but I speak
here of modern invention. In the case of Tennyson
it has certainly added the elevated emotion which belongs
essentially to the spirit of romance, and this saved English
literature during the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. But taking the work at its highest, it may still
be that the Graal legend must wait to receive its treat-
ment more fully by some poet who is to come. The
literary form assumed by the Graal Idyll of the King
— a tale within a tale twice-told — leaves something to be
desired. Many stars rise over many horizons, including
those of literature, but there is one star of the morning,
13
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and this in most cycles of books is rather an expected
glory than a dawn now visible
(3) The Archaeological, and this includes naturally
many branches, each of which has the character of a
learned inquiry calling for special knowledge, and, in
several instances, it is only of limited interest beyond
the field of scholarship.
Outside these admitted branches of presentation and
research, which lie, so to speak, upon the surface of
current literature, there is perhaps a fourth point of view
which is now in course of emerging, though scarcely into
public view, as it is only in an accidental and a sporadic
fashion that it has entered as yet into the written word.
For want of a better term it must be called spiritual. It
cares little for the archaeology of the subject, little for its
romantic aspects, and possibly something less than little for
the poetic side. It would scarcely know of Hawker's
Qjuest — not that it signifies vitally — and would pro-
bably regard the Graal symbol as I have otherwise
characterised it — as one of the legends of the soul — I
should have said again, sacramental legends, but this
point of view is not usual, nor is it indeed found to any
important extent, among those who hold extreme or any
Eucharistic views. In other words, it is not specially a
high Anglican or a Latin interest ; it characterises rather
those who regard religious doctrine, institute and ritual,
as things typical or analogical, without realising that as
such they are to be ranked among channels of grace. So
far as their conception has been put clearly to themselves,
for them the Graal is an early recognition of the fact
that doctrinal teachings are symbols and are no more
meant for literal acceptance than any express fables. It
is also a hazardous inquiry into obscure migrations of
doctrine from East to West, outside the Christian aspects
of Graal literature. This view appreciates, perhaps, only
in an ordinary degree the evidence of history, nor can
history be said to endorse it in its existing forms of
presentation. At the same time it is much too loose
The Roots of the House of Meaning
and indeterminate to be classed as a philosophical con-
struction of certain facts manifested in the life of a
literature. It is a consideration of several serious but
not fully equipped minds, and in some cases it has
been impeded by its sentimental aspects; but the re-
ference which I have made to it enables me to add that
it should have reached a better term in stronger and
surer hands. No one, however indifferent — or, indeed,
of all unobservant — can read the available romances with-
out seeing that the legend has its spiritual side, but it
has also, at the fact's value, that side which connects
it with folk-lore. No further afield than the Morte
cT Arthur, which here follows the great French Quest
among many antecedents, it is treated openly as an
allegory, and the chivalry of King Arthur's Court passes
explicitly during the Graal adventures into a region of
similitude, where every episode has a supernatural
meaning, which is explained sometimes in rather a
tiresome manner. I say this under the proper reserves,
because that which appears conventional and to some
extent even trivial in these non-metaphrastic portions
might prove, under the light of interpretation, of all
truth and the grace thereto belonging.
Superfluities and interpretations notwithstanding, it is
directly, or indirectly, out of the recent view, thus tenta-
tively designated, that the consideration of the present
thesis emerges as its final term, though out of all
knowledge thereof.
It has been my object to remove a great possibility
from hands which are worthy, and that certainly, but un-
consecrated by special knowledge, and it is my intention
to return it thereto by a gift of grace after changing the
substance thereof.
In searching out mysteries of this order, it must be
confessed that we are like Manfred in the course of an
evocation, for, in truth, many things answer us ; amidst
the confusion of tongues it is therefore no light task
to distinguish that which, for my part, I recognise as
15
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the true voice. The literature does, however, carry on
its surface the proof rather than the suggestion of a
hidden motive as well as a hidden meaning, and three
sources of evidence can be cited on the authority of the
texts : (#) Confessed allegory, but this would be ex-
cluded, except for one strong consideration. The mind
which confesses to allegory confesses also to mysticism,
this being the mode of allegory carried to the ne plus
ultra degree. (£) Ideological metathesis, the presence
of which is not to be confused with allegory, (c]
Certain traces and almost inferential claims which tend
to set the custodians of the Holy Graal in a position
superior to that of the orthodox church, though the
cycle is not otherwise hostile to the orthodox church.
It must be understood that the critical difficulties of
the Graal literature are grave within their own lines, and
the authorities thereon are in conflict over issues which
from their own standpoint may be occasionally not less
than vital. This notwithstanding, the elements of the
Graal problem really lie within a comparatively small com-
pass, though they are scattered through a literature which
is in no sense readily accessible, while it is, for the most
part, in a language that is not exactly familiar to the
reader of modern French. It has so far been in the
hands of those who, whatever their claims, have no
horizon outside the issues of folk-lore, and who, like
other specialists, have been a little disposed to create, on
the basis of their common agreement, a certain orthodoxy
among themselves, recognising nothing beyond their
particular canons of criticism and the circle of their
actual interests. To these canons there is no reason that
we should ourselves take exception ; they are more than
excellent in their way, only they do not happen to signify,
except antecedently and provisionally, for the higher
consequence with which we are here concerned. The
sincerity of scholarship imputes to it a certain sanctity,
but in respect of this consequence most scholarship
has its eyes bandaged.
16
The Roots of the House of Meaning
The interpretation of books is often an essay in
enchantment, a rite of evocation which calls, and the
souls of the dead speak in response in strange voices.
To those who are acquainted with the mysteries, perhaps
there are no books which respond in the same manner as
these old sacraments of mystic chivalry. They speak at
the very least our own language. I conclude, therefore,
that the most decorative of quests in literature is that
of the things that are eternal ; God is the proper quest
of the romantic spirit, and of God moveth not only the
High History of the Holy Graal, but the book of enchant-
ment which I have proposed to myself thereon.
And even now, as if amidst bells and Hosannahs, a
clear voice utters the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus — because
by this undertaking we have declared ourselves on God's
side.
Ill
THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE GRAAL
LITERATURE
It is useless to approach the literature of the Holy
Graal for any purpose of special consideration, in the
absence of a working acquaintance with that which en-
compassed it externally in history, in church doctrine,
in popular devotion and in ecclesiastical legend. As
an acquaintance of this kind must not be assumed in
my readers, I will take the chief points involved as
follows : (a) The doctrinal position of the Church in
respect of the Holy Eucharist ; (£) the passage of tran-
substantiation into dogma, and other circumstances
which led up to the institution of the feast of Corpus
Christi in 1264; (<:) the cultus of the Precious Blood;
(d) the mind exhibited by the higher life and the
mystical literature of sanctity ; (^) the standing of min-
strelsy ; (/) the horizon filled by coincident schools
17 B
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
of thought within and without the Church ; (£) the
state of the official Church itself, and more especially
(K] the position of the Church in Britain, including
its connection with the ambition of the English king ;
(/') the legendary history of certain relics ; (£) the voice
of Catholic tradition regarding Joseph of Arimathaea ;
(T) the true attitude of coincident heresies which have
been connected with Graal literature ; (m} the discovery
of the Sacro Catino in noi; (n) the invention of the
Sacred Lance at Antioch ; (0} the traditional history
of certain imputed relics of St. John the Baptist.
The consideration of some of these points must
remain over till we approach the term of our quest,
but for the working acquaintance which I have men-
tioned the particulars hereinafter following will serve
a temporary purpose, and will enable the unversed
reader to approach the literature of the Holy Graal
with a knowledge of several elements which entered
into its creation and were concerned in its develop-
ment.
Man does not live by bread alone, because it is
certain that there is the supernatural bread, and although
a great literature may arise in part out of folk-lore,
primeval fable and legend ; though in this sense it will
have its antecedents in that which was at first oral but
afterwards passed into writing, some records of which
may remain after generations and ages ; it does not
come about that the development can proceed without
taking over other elements. That these elements were
assumed in the case of the literature of the Holy Graal
is so obvious that there could and would be no call
to recite the bare fact if a particular motive were not
very clearly in view. As regards this, I desire to
establish that every student, and indeed many and any
who are simple readers in passing, will be aware that the
first matter of the literature was, as I have said, folk-lore,
as if broken meat and garlic, standing for the daily bread
of my first illustration. We shall see, in its proper
18
The Roots of the House of Meaning
place, that Celtic folk-lore — Welsh, Irish and what
not — had wonder-stories of cauldrons, dishes and gob-
lets, as it had also of swords and lances. Those who
in the later twelfth and the early thirteenth century
instituted the literature of the Holy Graal — being, as
they were, makers of songs and endless tellers of
stories — knew well enough of these earlier traditions ;
they were the heritage of the minstrel from long ante-
cedent generations of Druids and Scalds and Bards.
But there had come over them another and a higher
knowledge — a tradition, a legend, the hint of a secret
perpetuated ; above all and more than all, there had
come over them the divine oppression, the secret sense
of the mystery which lies behind the surface declaration
of the specifics of Christian doctrine. There was the
power and the portent of the great orthodox Church,
there was the abiding presence of the sacraments, there
was the unfailing growth of doctrine, there was the
generation of new doctrine, not indeed out of no
elements, not indeed by the fiat lux of the Seat of
Peter, but in the western countries of Europe — at so
great a distance from the centre — the growth was un-
suspected sometimes and often seemingly unprefaced,
as if there had been spontaneous generation. Ever
magnified and manifold in its resource, there was the
popular devotion, centred about a particular locality,
an especial holy person, and this or that individual holy
object. Under what circumstances and with what
motives actuating, we have to learn if we can in the
sequel, but we can understand in the lesser sense, and
perhaps too easily almost, how far the singers and the
song which they knew from the past underwent a great
transformation ; how the Bowl of Plenty became the
Cup or Chalice of the Eucharist ; how the spear of
many battles and the sword of destruction became the
Lance which pierced our Saviour and the weapon used
at the martyrdom of His precursor. I set it down that
these things might have intervened naturally as a simple
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
work of causation which we can trace with comparative
ease ; but they would not for this reason have assumed
the particular complexion which we shall find to charac-
terise the cycle ; we should not have its implicits, its
air and accent of mystery, its peculiar manifestation
of sacred objects, or its insistence on their final removal.
For the explanation of these things we shall have to go
further afield, but for the moment I need note only that
the writers of the literature have almost without ex-
ception certified that they followed a book which had
either come into their hands or of which they had
received an account from some one who had seen or
possessed a copy. We can trace in the later texts and
can sometimes identify the particular book which they
followed, but we come in fine to the alleged document
which preceded all and which for us is as a centre of
research.
Amidst the remanents of mythic elements and the
phantasmagoria of popular devotion, the veneration of
relics included, there stands forth that which from Chris-
tian time immemorial has been termed the Mystery of
Faith, the grace not less visible because it is veiled so
closely, and this is the Real Presence of Christ in the
material symbols of the Eucharist. Seeing that the
literature of the Holy Graal is, by the hypothesis of its
hallow-in-chief, most intimately connected with this
doctrine and the manifestation thereto belonging, it is
desirable and essential before all things to understand
the Eucharistic position at the period of the development
of the literature. We have the traces therein of two
schools of thought, though the evidence of the one is
clearer than that of the other ; they are respectively the
school of transubstantiation and that which is alternative
thereto, but not in a sectarian sense, namely, the spiritual
interpretation of the grace communicated in the palmary
sacrament of the altar.
The means of grace are infinite, but the recognised
Sacraments are seven, and to each of them is allocated a
20
'The Roots of the House of Meaning
locus which is symbolical of its position in the system.
Baptism is conferred at the West in the pronaos of the
temple, because it is the rite of entrance and the recep-
tion of the postulant. Confirmation takes place within
the sanctuary itself, on the steps of the altar, because
those who have been received in the body by the
mediation of sponsors are entitled, if they are properly
prepared, to their inheritance in the gifts of the Spirit.
The place of Penance is in the sideways, because those
who have fallen from righteousness have become thereby
extra-lineal, having deviated from the straight path which
leads to the Holy of Holies, and their rectification is
to come. The Eucharist is administered at the steps of
the chancel because it is taken from the hands of him
who has received it from the altar itself, and thus he
comes like Melchisedech carrying bread and wine, or in
the signs and symbols of the Mediator. It is symbolical
of the act of Christ in offering Himself for the redemp-
tion of mankind ; He comes therefore half-way to the
communicant, because He was manifested in the flesh.
This is the material sign of the union which is consum-
mated within, and its correspondence in the Sacraments
is Matrimony, which is celebrated in the same place and
is another sign of the union, even of the new and eternal
covenant. It is the work of Nature sanctified and Love,
under its proper warrants, declared holy on all planes.
The Sacrament of Holy Orders is conferred on the steps
of the altar, and it has more than this external corre-
spondence with that of Confirmation, of which it is the
higher form ; the latter is the rite of betrothal by which
on the threshold of life the candidate is dedicated to the
union and the spouse of the union descends for a moment
upon him, with the sign and seal of possession ; the
former is the spiritual marriage of the priest, by which
he espouses the Church militant on earth that the Church
triumphant in Heaven may at a proper season intervene
for the consummation of the higher conjugal rights.
The sacrament of Extreme Unction is the last act and
21
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the last consolation which the Church can offer to the
faithful, and it is performed outside the temple because
the Church follows its children, even to the gate of
death, that their eyes may behold His salvation, Who has
fulfilled according to His Word.
It is only at first sight that this brief interpretation will
seem out of place in the section ; its design is to show,
by the ritual position in which the sacraments are adminis-
tered, that the Holy Eucharist, which has its place of
repose and exposition at the far East on the Altar, is the
great palladium of the Christian mystery, that the Orient
comes from on high, moving to meet the communicant,
because God is and He recompenses those who seek
Him out. The correspondences hereof in the romances
are (a) the rumours of the Graal which went before the
Holy Quests, and (F) the going about of the Graal, so
that it was beheld in chapels and hermitages — yes, even in
the palace of the King.
The great doctrinal debate of the closing twelfth
and the early thirteenth century was that which con-
cerned the mystery of the Eucharist, and in matters
of doctrine there was no other which could be called
second in respect of it. It filled all men's ears, and
there can be no question that the vast sodality of min-
strelsy was scarcely less versed than the outer section of
the priesthood in its palmary elements. Of this debate
France was a particular centre, and Languedoc, in the
persons of the Albigenses, was a place of holocaust, the
denial of the Eucharist being one of the charges against
them. As regards the question itself, I suppose it will be
true to say that it turned upon the doctrine of transub-
stantiation, which was decreed by the Council of Lateran
in 1215, under Pope Innocent III. The words of the
definition are : " The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ
are really contained under the species of bread and wine
in the Sacrament of the Altar, the bread being transub-
stantiated into the Body and the Wine into the Blood."
Long anterior to this promulgation, there can be no
22
The Roots of the House of Meaning
doubt that the doctrine represented the mind of the
Church at the seat of its power. In contradistinction
thereto were the opinions of the protesting sects, while
external to both was the feeling of a minority which did
not object openly, yet did not less strongly hold to a
spiritual interpretation of the Real Presence. The ex-
ternal devotion to the Eucharist which was manifested
more and more by the extremists on the side of the
Church would scarcely be checked by the exponents of
the middle way, and indeed it might well have been
encouraged, though not with an intention which could
be termed the same specifically. In the thirteenth cen-
tury the elements were beginning to be elevated for the
adoration of the people ; the evidence is regarded as
doubtful in respect of any earlier period. It must have
become a general custom in 1216, for a constitution of
Honorius III. speaks of it as of something which had
been done always. In 1229 Gregory IX. devised the
ringing of a bell before consecration as a warning for
the faithful to fall on their knees and worship Christ in
the Eucharist. Still earlier in the thirteenth century
Odo, Bishop of Paris, regulated the forms of venera-
tion, more especially when the Sacred Elements were
carried in procession. Hubert, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, had taken similar precautions at the end of the
twelfth century. It seems to follow from the constitu-
tions of Odo that some kind of reservation was prac-
tised at his period, and I believe that the custom had
descended from primitive times. There is nothing,
however, in the romances to show that this usage was
familiar ; the perpetual presence was for them in the Holy
Graal, and apparently in that only. Church and chapel
and hermitage resounded daily with the celebration of the
Mass. In one instance we hear of a tabernacle on the
Altar, or some kind of receptacle in which the Con-
secrated Elements reposed. The most usual mediaeval
practice was to reserve in a dove-shaped repository
which hung before the Table of the Lord. The
23
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Book of the Holy Graal has, as we shall see, a very
curious example of reservation, for it represents a
Sacred Host delivered to the custody of a convert,
one also who was a woman and not in the vows of
religion. It was kept by her in a box, and the infer-
ence of the writer is that Christ was, for this reason,
always with her. The reader who is dedicated in his
heart to the magnum mysterium of faith will be disposed
to regard this as something approaching sacrilege, and
I confess to the same feeling, but it was a frequent
practice in the early church, and not, as it might well
be concluded, a device of romance.
As regards transubstantiation, the voice of the litera-
ture in the absence of an express statement on either side
seems to represent both views. The Greater Chronicles
of the Graal are as text-books for the illustration of the
doctrine, but it is absent from the Lesser Chronicles, and
outside this negative evidence of simple silence there are
other grounds for believing that it was unacceptable to
their writers, who seem to represent what I have called
already the spiritual interpretation of the Real Presence,
corresponding to what ecclesiologists have termed a body
of Low Doctrine within the Church.
There was another question exercising the Church at
the same period, though some centuries were to elapse
before it was to be decided by the central authority. It
was that of communion in both kinds, which was finally
abolished by the Council of Constance in 1415, the
decision then reached being confirmed at Trent in 1562.
The ordination of communion in one kind was preceded
by an intermediate period when ecclesiastical feeling was
moving in that direction, but there was another and an
earlier period — that is to say, in the fifth century — when
communion under one kind was prohibited expressly on
the ground that the division of the one mystery could
not take place without sacrilege. As a species of middle
way, there was the practice of the intincted or steeped
Host which seems to have been coming into use at the
24
The Roots of the House of Meaning
beginning of the tenth century, although it was pro-
hibited at the Council of Brago in Galicia, except
possibly in the case of the sick and of children. The
custom of mixing the elements was defended by
Emulphus, Bishop of Rochester, in 1120, and Arch-
bishop Richard referred to the intincted Host in 1175.
All these problems of practice and doctrine were the
religious atmosphere in which the literature of the
Graal was developed. There were great names on all
sides ; on that of transubstantiation there was the name
of Peter Lombard, the Master of Sentences, though he
did not dare to determine the nature of the conversion
— whether, that is to say, it was " formal, substantial, or
of some other kind " ; on the side of communion under
one element there was that of St. Thomas Aquinas, the
Angel of the Schools.
With an environment of this kind it was inevitable
that poetry and legend should take over the mystery
of the Eucharist, and should exalt it and dwell thereon.
We shall see very shortly that the assumption was not
so simple as might appear from this suggestion, and that
something which has the appearance of a secret within
the sanctuary had been heard of in connection with the
central institution of official Christianity. In any case,
from the moment that the Eucharist entered into the
life of romantic literature, that literature entered after a
new manner into the heart of the western peoples. Very
soon, it has been said, the Graal came to be regarded as
the material symbol of the Catholic and Christian faith,
but it was really the most spiritual symbol ; I believe that
it was so considered, and the statement does little more
than put into English the inspired words of the Ordinary
of the Mass. In the middle of the mistaken passion
for holy wars in Palestine ; through the monstrous
iniquity of Albigensian Crusades ; the ever-changing
struggle notwithstanding between Pope and King and
Emperor ; within the recurring darkness of interdict,
when the Sacraments were hidden like the Graal ; the
25
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Legend of the Holy Graal grew and brightened, till the
most stressful of times adventurous, the most baleful of
all enchantments, shone, as it seemed, in its shining, and
a light which had been never previously on the land or
sea of literature glorified the spirit of romance. It was
truly as if the great company of singers and chroniclers
had gathered at the high altar to partake of the Blessed
Sacrament, and had communicated not only in both kinds,
but in elements of extra-valid consecration.
The thesis of this section is that God's immanence
was declared at the time of the literature, through all
Christendom, by the Mystery of Faith and that the
development of Eucharistic doctrine into that of tran-
substantiation was a peculiar recognition of the corporate
union between Christ and His people. That imman-
ence also was declared by the high branches of Graal
romance, even as by the quests of the mind in philo-
sophy— in which manner romance, in fine, became the
mirror of religion, and the literature testified, under
certain veils, to a mystery of Divine experience which
once at least was manifested in Christendom.
So I who am about to speak offer a loving salutation
to the learned and admirable souls who have preceded
me in the way of research. It is because I have ascended
an untrodden peak in Darien to survey the prospect of
the Quest, and have found that there is another point
of view, that I come forward in these pages carrying
strange tidings, but leaving to all my precursors the
crowns and bays and laurels which they have deserved
so well, and offering no contradiction to anything which
they have attained truly. How admirable is the life of
the scholar — how unselfish are the motives which inspire
him — and how earnestly we who, past all revocation, are
dedicated to the one subject desire that those paths which
he travels — when even they seem far from the goal — may
lead him to that term which is his as well as ours, for
assuredly he seeks only the truth as he conceives thereof.
As the theory of transubstantiation did not pass into
26
The Roots of the House of Meaning
dogma till a late period in the development of the canon
of the Graal, so it can be said that romantic texts
like the 'Book of the Holy Graal, the Longer Prose
Perceval and the Galahad Quest, but the last espe-
cially, which contains the higher code of chivalry,
were instrumental in promoting that dogma by the
proclamation of a sacrosaintly feast of Corpus Christi
maintained for ever in the Hidden House of the Graal,
till the time came when the great feast of exaltation and
the assumption into heaven of the sacred emblems was
held in fine at Sarras. There was, therefore, a correla-
tion of activity between the two sides of the work, for it
was out of the growing dogma that the Graal legend in
the Greater Chronicles assumes its particular sacramental
complexion.
When all has been granted and, after granting, has
been exalted even, it remains that the Eucharistic symbol
is so much the greatest of all that we can say that there
is a second scarcely, because this is the palmary channel
of grace, and — in the last resource — we do not need
another. If it were not that the literature of the Holy
Graal offers intimations of still more glorious things
behind this mystery than we are accustomed to find in
theological and devotional handbooks, I suppose that
the old books would have never concerned my thoughts.
Now therefore, God willing, I speak to no one, in or out
of churches, sects and learned societies, who docs not
realise in his heart that the path of the life everlasting
lies, mystically speaking, within the consecrated elements
of bread and wine, beyond which veils all the high
Quests are followed.
Passing from the doctrinal matters expressed and im-
plied in the Graal literature to the sacred palladia with
which it is concerned more especially, we enter into
another species of environment. Out of the doctrine of
transubstantiation, and perhaps more especially out of the
particular congeries of devotional feelings connected there-
with, there originated what may be termed a cultus of
27
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the body of God and of His blood, understood in the
mystery of the Incarnation, and the instinct which lies
behind the veneration of relics came into a marked degree
of operation. Such veneration is instinctive, as I have
just said, and representing on the external side, invalidly
or not, the substance of things unseen in religion, it is so
rooted in our natural humanity that it would be difficult
to regard its manifestation in Christendom as characteristic
more especially of Christianity than of some other phases
of belief. The devotion which, because of its excesses, is
by a hasty and unrooted philosophy termed superstition
— which no instinct can ever be — manifested early enough
and never wanted its objects. There can be scarcely any
call to point out that in the considerations which here
follow I am concerned with questions of fact and not with
adjudication thereon. The veneration of relics and
cognate objects, to which some kind of sanctity was
imputed, became not only an environment of Christianity
at a very early period, but it so remains to the present day
for more than half of Christendom. It may be one of
the grievous burdens of those ecclesiastical systems about
which it prevails and in which it is still promoted, but
having said what the sense of intellectual justice seems to
require, that it may be exonerated from the false charge
of superstition, I have only to add — and this is to lift
the Graal literature out of the common judgment which
might be passed upon memorials of relic worship — that
the instinct of such devotions, as seen at their best in the
official churches, has always an arch-natural implicit ; it
works upon the simple principle that God is not the God
of the dead but of the living, and the reverence, by
example, for the Precious Blood of Christ depends from
the doctrine of His immanence in any memorials which
He has left. I need not add that, on the hypothesis of
the Church itself, the sense of devotion would be better
directed, among external objects, towards the Real Pres-
ence in the symbols of the Eucharist ; but in the Graal
literature it was round about the Sacramental Mystery
28
The Roots of the House of Meaning
that the Relics of the Passion were collected, operating
and shining in that light.
We know already that the Sacred Vessel of the
legends was in the root-idea a Reliquary, and as such
that it was the container and preserver of the Precious
Blood of Christ. The romantic passion which brought
this Reliquary into connection with the idea of that
sacrament which communicated the life of Christ's blood
to the believing soul, and the doctrinal passion which led
to the definition concerning transubstantiation interacted
one upon another. John Damascene had said in the
eighth century that the elements of bread and wine were
assumed and united to the Divinity — which took place
by the invocation of the Holy Ghost, for the Spirit
descends and changes. The Venerable Bede had said
that the Lord gave us the sacrament of His flesh and
blood in the figure of bread and wine. And again :
" Christ is absent as to His Body, but is present as to
His Divinity." And yet further: "The Body and Blood
of Jesus Christ are received in the mouth of believers for
their salvation." I do not know whether the implicits
of this presentation have been realised in any school of
interpreters, but there is one of them which covers all
phases of sacramental exegesis, however variant from each
other, and however in conflict with high Roman doctrine
concerning the Eucharist. I state it as one who after
long searchings has found a hidden jewel of the sacra-
ment which might be an eirenicon for all the sects alive.
It has also the simplicity which Khunrath, in expounding
the Hermetic side of Eternal Wisdom, has said to be the
seal of Nature and Art. I testify, therefore, that the
true mystery of the Eucharist resides in the assumption
by the Divine Life of the veils of Bread and Wine, and
that even as once in time and somewhere in the world
that life assumed the veils of flesh and blood, which
became the Body of the Lord, so here and now — daily
on every worshipful and authorised altar over the wide,
wide world — do those unspotted elements become again
29
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that sacred vehicle, so that he who communicates in the
faith of spirit and of truth, receives that which is not
less truly the Divine Body than the especial polarisation
of elements which was born in Nazareth of the sacred
and glorious Virgin. Moreover, I am very certain that
the one mystery was operated as if in the terms and
valid forms of the other by the invocation of the Holy
Spirit and the utter consecration of the elements. The
reason is that given by Leo the Great, or another, so
long and long ago — that Mary conceived in her heart
before she conceived in her body. But having so con-
ceived, the elements within her were transubstantiated
into the Divine Body. I desire to add with all venera-
tion and homage that this root-mystery of redemption
is that which lies behind the devotion to the Mother of
God, which has ascended to such heights in the Latin
Church. This Church is the one witness through the
ages whose instinct on the great subjects has never erred,
however long and urgently the powers of the deep and
the powers of perdition have hammered at the outer gates.
Among other things, she has always recognised in the
withdrawn and most holy part of her consciousness that
she who conceived Christ — by the desire of the mystery
of God satisfied out of all measure in a consummated
marriage of the mind — had entered through her humanity
into assumption with the Divine, and was to be counted
no longer merely among the elected daughters of Zion.
To return therefore, those who say that the Eucharist
is flesh and blood are speaking God's truth, and I ask
in examine mortis —
" In life's delight, in death's dismay " —
that I may never receive otherwise. And those who say
that such things are understood spiritually say also the
truth which is eternal after their own manner, whence
I look to communicate with them when " the dedely
flesh" begins "to beholde the spyrytuel thynges " — or
ever I set forth in that ship of mystic faith which was
30
The Roots of the House of Meaning
built from the beginning of this external order that it
may carry us in fine to Sarras, though it is known that
we shall go further.
Well, fratres carissimi, sorores ex omnibus dilectissimte, to
whom I speak the wisdom of the other world in a
mystery — those who out of all expectation translated
the deep things of doctrine, as they best could, into the
language of romance — out of the Latin, as they said
in their cryptic fashion — the Palladium of all research
was that Vessel of Singular Election which contained, in
their ingenuous symbolism, the Blood of Christ ; but
seeing that they were in a hurry to show how those who
were worthy to receive the arch-natural sacraments did
after some undeclared manner partake at the Graal Mass
of corporeal and incorporeal elements which were fit to
sustain both body and soul, so did the Reliquary become
the Chalice, or alternatively it was elevated and the Christ
came down to distribute His own life with the osculum
fraternitatis and the consolamentum of all consolation. They
collected, also, under the ecclesiastical and monastic aegis,
certain other relics about the relic-in-chief. Now, the
point concerning all is that most of the minor Hallows
were known already as local objects of sanctity no less
than the palmary Hallow, but the sanctity ascribed to
the latter and the devotion thereto belonging were
beginning to prevail generally. It is difficult to trace
the growth of this kind of cultus ; but as to the worship
of spiritual devotion there was offered everywhere in
Christendom the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacra-
ment of the Altar, so at many shrines — as if the more
visible symbol carried with it a validity of its own, a
more direct and material appeal — there was the reputed
sang real of Christ preserved in a reliquary. Some of
these local devotions were established and well known
before the appearance of any text of the Holy Graal with
which we are acquainted — probably before those texts
which we can discern behind the extant literature.
We have at the present day the Feast of the Precious
31
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Blood, which is a modern invention, and perhaps for some
even who are within the fold of the Latin Church, it is
classed among the unhappy memorials of the pontificate
of Pius IX. This notwithstanding, it is what may be
termed popular, and has in England its confraternities and
other systems to maintain it in the mind of the laity. It
has the London Oratory as its more particular centre, and
it is described as an union and an apostolate of inter-
cessory prayer. Without such assistance in the Middle
Ages we can understand that the cultus had its appeal to
the devotional side of the material mind, for which flesh
and blood profited a good deal, in spite of asceticism and
the complication of implicits behind the counsels of
perfection in the religious life of the age.
The historical antiquity of the local sanctities which
centre about certain relics is shrouded like some
Masonic events in the vague grandeur of time imme-
morial, and a defined date is impossible. Because the
legends of the Graal are connected with the powers and
wonders of several hallowed objects belonging to the
Passion of Christ, it is essential rather than desirable to
ascertain whether at the period when the literature arose
—and antedating it, if that be possible — there were
such objects already in existence and sufficiently well
known to respond as a terminus a quo in respect of the
development of the legends. The places which appear
as claimants to the possession of relics of the Precious
Blood are, comparatively speaking, numerous ; among
others there are Bruges, Mantua, Saintes, the Imperial
Monastery at Weingarten, and even Beyrout. According
to the story of Mantua, the relic was preserved by
Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced the side of
Christ. Within the historical period, it is said to have
been divided, and some part of it was secured by the
monastery of Weingarten, already mentioned. This
portion was again subdivided and brought from Germany
by Richard of Cornwall, the brother of Henry III. Frac-
tional as the portion was, it is affirmed to have been a
32
The Roots of the House of Meaning
large relic, and the fortunate possessor founded a religious
congregation to guard and venerate it. Later on it was,
however, divided again into three parts, of which one was
retained by the congregation, one was deposited in a
monastery built for the purpose at Ashted, near Berk-
hampstead, and the third in a third monastery erected
at Hailes in Gloucestershire. All these were foundations
by Richard of Cornwall ; and to explain such continual
division, it must be remembered that this was a period
when the building of churches and religious houses was
prohibited without relics to sanctify them. Now, the
story of Richard himself may be accepted as tolerably
well founded, but there is much doubt concerning the
relics at Weingarten and at Mantua itself. The alter-
native statements are (i) that in 1247 the Templars sent
to King Henry III. a vas vetustissimum^ having the appear-
ance of crystal and reputed to contain the Precious
Blood ; (2) that in the same year, and to the same King,
there was remitted by the Patriarch of Jerusalem a
Reliquary termed the Sangreal, which had once belonged
to Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathasa. Now it is
obvious that at the period of Henry III. the canon of
the Graal literature was almost closed ; the last of these
stories is obviously a reflection of that literature ; it was
also the time when (a) the Sacro Catino of Geneva may
have begun to be regarded as the Graal, and when (<£) a
similar attribution was given to a sacred vessel which had
been long preserved at Constantinople ; but these objects,
whether dishes or chalices, were not reliquaries. It will
be seen that the claim of Mantua remains over with
nothing to account for its origin. Of Beyrout I have
heard only, and have no details to offer. But the relic of
Bruges has a clear and methodical history, passing from
legend into a domain which may be that of fact. The
legend is that Joseph of Arimathasa having collected the
Blood from the wounds of Christ, as the literature of
the Graal tells us, placed it in a phial, which was taken
to Antioch by St. James the Less, who was the first
33 c
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
bishop of that city. The possible historical fact is that
the Patriarch of Antioch gave the Reliquary about 1130
to a knight of Bruges who had rendered signal services
to the church in Antioch. It was brought back by the
knight to his native place, and there it has remained to
this day. The dubious element in the story is the gift
of such a relic under any circumstances whatever; the
point in its favour is that the phial has the character of
oriental work, which is referred by experts in ancient glass
to the seventh or eighth century.
Against, or rather in competition with, this simple and
consistent claim, there is the monstrous invention con-
nected with the monastery of the Holy Trinity at
Fecamp in Normandy. Here there is — or there was at
least in the year 1840 — a tabernacle of white marble,
decorated with sculptured figures and inscribed : "Hie
SANGUIS D.N., I.H.V., X.P.I." It is therefore called
the Tabernacle of the Precious Blood.
The story is that Joseph of Arimathaea removed the
blood from the wounds of Christ, after the body had
been taken down from the Cross, using his knife for the
purpose, and collecting the sacred fluid in his gauntlet.
The gauntlet he placed in a coffer, and this he concealed
in his house. The years passed away, and on his death-
bed he bequeathed the uncouth reliquary to his nephew
Isaac, telling him that if he preserved it the Lord would
bless him in all his ways. Isaac and his wife began to
enjoy every manner of wealth and prosperity ; but she was
an unconverted Jewess, and seeing her husband per-
forming his devotions before the coffer, she concluded that
he had dealings with an evil spirit, and she denounced him
to the high priest. The story says that he was acquitted,
but he removed with the reliquary to Sidon, where the
approaching siege of Jerusalem was made known to him
in a vision. He therefore concealed the reliquary
in a double tube of lead, with the knife and the head
of the Lance which had pierced the side of Christ.
The tube itself he concealed^ in the trunk of a fig-tree,
34
The Roots of the House of Meaning
the bark of which closed over its contents, so that no
fissure was visible. A second vision on the same subject
caused him to cut down the tree, and he was inspired to
commit it to the waves. In the desolation which he felt
thereafter an angel told him that his treasure had reached
shore in Gaul, and was hidden in the sand near the valley
of Fecamp.
I do not propose to recount the various devices by
which the history of the fig-tree is brought up to the
period when the monastery was founded at the end of
the tenth century. The important points in addition
are (#) that the nature of the Reliquary did not satisfy
the custodians, and, like the makers of Graal books, they
wanted an arch-natural chalice to help out their central
Hallow ; (£) that they secured this from the priest of
a neighbouring church who had celebrated Mass on a
certain occasion, and had seen the consecrated elements
converted into flesh and blood ; (c) that a second knife
was brought, later on, by an angel ; (d) that a general
exposition of all the imputed relics took place on the
high altar in 1171 ; (tf) that their praises and wonders
were celebrated by a guild of jongleurs attached to the
monastery, which guild is said to have originated early in
the eleventh century, and was perpetuated for over four
hundred years ; (/) that the story is told in a mediaeval
romance of the thirteenth century, though in place of
Joseph the character in chief is there said to be Nicodemus;
\g) that there are other documents in French and in
Latin belonging to different and some of them to simi-
larly early periods ; (h) that there is also a Mass of the
Precious Blood, which was published together with the
poem in 1 840, and this is, exoterically speaking, a kind
of Mass of the Graal, but I fear that a careful examina-
tion might create some doubt of its antiquity, and,
speaking generally, I do not see (i) that any of the
documents have been subjected to critical study ; or (2)
that Fecamp is likely to have been more disdainful
about the law of great inventions than other places with
35
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Hallows to maintain in Christian — or indeed in any other
— times.
So far as regards the depositions which it might be
possible to take in the Monastery concerning its
Tabernacle ; and there is only one thing more which
need be mentioned at this stage. It has been proved by
very careful and exhaustive research into the extant codices
of the Conte del Graal that some copies of the continua-
tion by Gautier de Doulens state that the episode of
Mont Douloureux was derived from a book written at
Fecamp. It follows that one early text at least in the
literature of the Holy Graal draws something from the
Monastery of the Holy Trinity, but, lest too much
importance should be attributed to this fact, I desire to
note for my conclusion : (#) that the episode in question
has no integral connection with the Graal itself; (^) that
the tradition of Fecamp, which I have characterised as
monstrous, by which I mean in comparison with the
worst side of the general legends of the Precious Blood,
is utterly distinct from that of the Holy Graal in the texts
which constitute the literature ; and (c) that this literature
passed, as we shall find, out of legend into the annuncia-
tion of a mystic claim. It is the nature of this claim, the
mystery of sanctity which lies behind it, and the quality of
perpetuation by which the mystery was handed on, that is
the whole term of my quest, and here it stands declared.
We have seen how at Fecamp there occurred a very
curious intervention on the part of an arch-natural chalice,
being that vessel into which the Graal passes by a kind of
superincession, if it does not begin and end therein. But
there are other legends of chalices and dishes in the
wide world of reliquaries, and in order to clear the
issues I may state in the first place that the Table of the
Last Supper is said to be preserved at St. John Lateran,
with no history of its migration attached thereto. The
Church of Savillac in the diocese of Montauban has also,
or once had, a Tabula Ccen<e Domini and the Bread used
at that Table. As regards the chalice itself, there is one
36
The Roots of the House of Meaning
of silver at Valencia which the Catholic mind of Spain
has long regarded as that of the Last Supper ; but I have
no records of its history. There is one other which is
world-wide in its repute, and this I have mentioned
already, as if by an accidental reference. The Sacro
Catino is preserved in the Church of St. Laurence at
Genoa, and it is pictured in the book which Fra Gaetano
di San Teresa dedicated to the subject in 1726. It
corresponds by its general appearance — which recalls,
broadly speaking, the calix of an enormous flower — more
closely to the form which might, in the absence of
expert knowledge, be attributed to a decorative Paschal
Dish than a wine-cup ; but there is no need to say that it
is not an archaic glass vessel of Jewry. The history of
so well known an object is rather one of weariness in
recital, but at the crusading sack of Cassarea in noi the
Genoese received as their share of the booty, or in part
consideration thereof, what they believed to be a great
cup or dish carved out of a single emerald ; it was about
forty centimetres in height, and a little more than one
metre in circumference ; the form was hexagonal, and it
was furnished with two handles, polished and rough
respectively. Now, Caesarea was near enough to the
Holy Fields for the purposes of a sacred identification in
the hearts of crusaders, and moreover the vessel had been
found in the mosque of Antioch, which might have
helped to confuse their minds by suggesting that it was
a stolen relic of Christian sanctity. But at the time
when the city was pillaged there is no evidence that the
notion occurred to the Genoese, unless it was on some
vague ground of the kind that at the return of some of
them it was deposited in their church as a gift. It may
well have been a thank-offering, and this only, but I
confess to a certain suspicion that, vaguely or otherwise,
they had assumed its sacred character, and that its identi-
fication, not certainly with the Holy Graal, but with the
dish or chalice of the Last Supper, may have begun earlier
than has been so far supposed — antedating, that is to
37
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
say, the first record in history. This record is connected
with the name of the author of the Golden Legend, Jacobus
de Voragine, at the end of the thirteenth century. There
is, however, some reason to believe that the attribution
was common already in Genoa prior to the period in
question. The point which is posed for consideration is
whether the wide diffusion of the Graal literature caused
such a claim to be put forward by the wardens of the
Sacro Catino. The materials for a decision are unfor-
tunately not in our hands. With the Graal itself it
could not have been connected properly, seeing that the
vessel was empty ; but perversions of this kind are not
outside the field of possibility. Whatever the ultimate
value of an empirical consideration like this, the heaviest
fines, and even death itself, were threatened against those
who should touch the vessel with any hard object. A
cruel but belated disillusion, however, awaited its wardens
when it was taken to Paris in 1816, and was not only
broken on the way back, but, having been subjected to
testing, was proved to be only glass.
Second in importance only to the vessel of the Holy
Graal was the Sacred Lance of the Legend, and as in the
majority of texts this is also a relic of the Passion, our
next task is to ascertain its antecedent or concurrent
history in the life of popular devotion. We know already
of the thesis issued at Fecamp, but the claims are so
many that no one has cared especially. The shaft of
the spear used by Longinus when he pierced the side
of Christ is preserved in the Basilica of St. Peter.
According to the Roman Martyrology, the Deicide
was suffering from ophthalmia when he inflicted the
wound, and some of the Precious Blood overflowing his
face, he was healed immediately — which miracle led, it is
declared, to his conversion. Cassiodorus, who belongs
to the fifth century, says that the Lance was in his days
at Jerusalem, but this was the head and the imbedded
part of the shaft, the rest being missing. He does not
account for its preservation from the time of Christ to
38
The Roots of the House of Meaning
his own. Gregory of Tours speaks of its removal to
Constantinople, which notwithstanding it was discovered
once more at Antioch for the encouragement of Crusaders,
under circumstances of particular suspicion, even in the
history of relics. This was in 1098. There is also a
long story of its being pledged by Baldwin II. to Venice,
and of its redemption by St. Louis, which event brought
it to Paris ; but this is too late for our subject. A Holy
Lance with an exceedingly confused history — but identical
as to its imputed connection with the Passion — came
also into the possession of Charlemagne. That any
history of such a hallow is worthless does not make it
less important when the object is to exhibit the simple
fact that it was well known in this world before Graal
literature, as we find it, had as yet come into existence.
According to St. Andrew of Crete, the head of the
Lance was buried with the True Cross, but it does not
seem to have been disinterred therewith. It is just to
add that some who have investigated the question bear
witness that the history of the Hallow is reasonably
satisfactory in the sixth century and thence onwards.
The next relic which may be taken to follow on our
list is the Crown of Thorns ; it figures only in one
romance of the Graal, but has an important position
therein. The possession of single or several Sacred
Thorns has been claimed by more than one hundred
churches, without prejudice to which there are those
which have the Crown itself, less or more intact. This
also is not included among the discoveries of St. Helena
in connection with the True Cross, and there is no early
record concerning it ; but it is mentioned as extant by
St. Paulin de Nole at the beginning of the fifth century.
One hundred years later, Cassiodorus said that it was at
Jerusalem ; Gregory of Tours also bears testimony to its
existence. In the tenth century part of it was at
Constantinople, which was a general centre, if not a
forcing-house, of desirable sacred objects. St. Germain,
Bishop of Paris, was in that city and received part of it
39
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
as a present from the Emperor Justinian. Much earlier
the patriarch of Jerusalem is supposed to have sent
another portion to Charlemagne. In 1106 the treasure
at Constantinople is mentioned by Alexis Comnenus.
Another Crown of Thorns is preserved in Santa Maria
della Spina of Pisa,
The Sacred Nails of the Passion appear once in the
Book of the Holy Graal, and these also have an early
history in relics. Some or all of them were discovered
by St. Helena with the True Cross, and, according to St.
Ambrose, one of them was placed by her in the diadem of
Constantine, or alternatively in his helmet, and a second
in the bit of his horse. In the sixth century St. Gregory
of Tours speaks of four nails, and it seems to follow from
St. Chrysostom that the bit of Constantine's charger was
coupled with the Lance as an object of veneration in his
days. As regards the diadem fashioned by St. Helena
this was welded of iron and became the Iron Crown of
Lombardy, being given by Gregory I. to Theodolinde in
recognition of her zeal for the conversion of the Lombard
people. Charlemagne, Sigismund, Charles V. and Napo-
leon I. were crowned therewith. Muratori and others
say that the Nail which hallowed it was not heard of in
this connection till the end of the sixteenth century, and
the Crown itself has been challenged. Twenty-nine places
in all have laid claim to the possession of one or other of
the four nails, and there are some commendable devices
of subtlety to remove the sting of this anomaly. It is
sufficient for our own clear purpose to realise that the
relics, if not everywhere, were in " right great plenty."
It is also in the Book of the Holy Graal, and there only, that
we see for a moment, in the high pageant of all, a vision
of an ensanguined Cross, a blood-stained Cincture and a
bended rod, also dyed with blood. Of the Crux vera and
its invention I need say nothing, because its relics, imputed
and otherwise, are treasured everywhere, and I suppose
that their multiplicity, even at the earliest Graal period,
made it impossible to introduce the Cross as an exclusive
40
The Roots of the House of Meaning
Hallow in the Sacred House of Relics. By the Cincture
there was understood probably that bandage with which
the eyes of Christ were blindfolded, and this, or its
substitute, had been in the possession of Charlemagne
and was by him given to St. Namphasus, who built the
Abbey of Marcillac and there deposited the relic. It is
now in a little country church called St. Julian of
Lunegarde. According to St. Gregory of Tours, the reed
and the sponge, which had once been filled with vinegar,
were objects of veneration at his day in Jerusalem. They
are supposed to have been taken to Constantinople, which
notwithstanding an informant of the Venerable Bede saw
the sponge with his own eyes, deposited in a silver cup
at the Holy City. He saw also the shorter reed, which
served as the derisive symbol of the Lord's royalty.
The last relic of the Passion of which we hear in the
books of the Graal is the Volto Santo, which all men know
and venerate in connection with the piteous legend of
Veronica. The memorials of this tradition are, on a
moderate computation, as old as the eighth century, but
the course of time has separated it into four distinct
branches. The first and the oldest of these is preserved
in a Vatican manuscript, which says that Veronica was
the woman whose issue of blood was healed by Christ,
and she herself was the artist who painted the likeness.
She was carried to Rome with the picture for the healing
of the Emperor Tiberius. The second branch is con-
tained in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the eleventh
century, and this says that the relic was a piece of Christ's
garment which received in a miraculous manner the im-
pression of His countenance. The origin of the third
tradition seems to have been in Germany, but it is pre-
served in some metrical and other Latin narrative
versions. The likeness of Christ is said to be very large,
apparently full length. It was in the possession of Ver-
onica, but without particulars of the way in which it was
acquired. In another story — this is perhaps of the twelfth
century — the Emperor who was healed is Vespasian, and
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Christ Himself impressed His picture on the face-cloth
which He used when He washed before supper at the house
of Veronica. She had asked St. Luke, whom tradition
represents as an artist, for a copy of the Master's like-
ness. The fourth and last variant is the familiar
Calvary legend, wherein the holy woman offers in His
service the cloth which she has on her arm when Christ
is carrying the Cross, and she is rewarded by the impress
of His countenance thereon. The noticeable point is
that the story of Veronica, of the Volto Santo, and of the
healing of a Roman Emperor is the root-matter of the
earliest historical account of the Holy Graal, and this
fact has led certain scholars to infer that the entire
literature has been developed out of the Veronica legend,
as a part of the conversion legend of Gaul, according to
which the holy woman, in the company of the three
Maries and of Lazarus, took ship to Marseilles and
preached the Gospel therein. They carried the Volto Santo
and other Hallows.
I approach now the term of this inquiry, and there
remains for consideration the Sword of the Graal legends,
which is accounted for variously in respect of its history
and is also described variously, but it is not under any
circumstances a Hallow of the Passion. A romance which
stands late in the cycle, so far as chronology is concerned,
connects it with the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist.
I have found no story in the world of relics to help us
in accounting for this invention, though there are traces
of a sword of St. Michael. In this respect, as indeed in
other ways, the Hallow is complicated in the literature.
It embodies (a) matter brought over from folk-lore ; (£)
deliberate invention, as when one story affirms it to be
the sword of David, and another that of Judas Maccabasus;
and (c) the semi-devotional fable to which I have referred
above, and this must be taken in connection with the
legends of the head of St. John, served to Herodias on a
charger to satiate her desire for revenge on the precursor
of Christ, he seeming to have reproached her concerning
The Roots of the House of Meaning
her manner of life. It will be plain from the enumera-
tion subjoined that the relics of St. John are compre-
hensive as to the person of his body. ( i ) A martyrology
tells us that some of his blood was collected by a holy
woman at the time of his decapitation, was put into
a vessel of silver, and was carried into her country of
Guienne ; there it was placed in a temple which she
erected to his honour. (2) The body was, according to
one account, placed in a temple at Alexandria, which was
dedicated to the Saint. Another says that the head was
first interred in the sepulchre of Eliseus at Samaria.
During the reign of Julian the Apostate it was redeemed
from possible profanation, and sent to St. Athanasius, who
concealed it in a wall of his church. At the end of the
fourth century the same remains were removed to a new
church, built on the site of a temple of Serapis. Subse-
quently they were divided and distributed. (3) The
Caput Johannis was carried to Antioch by St. Luke, or
alternatively to Cassarea. From whichever place, it was
afterwards removed to Constantinople and brought finally
into France, where it was divided into three parts, one of
which is at Amiens, another at Angely in the diocese of
Nantes, and the third at Nemours in the diocese of
Sens. A distinct account states that the head was found
in Syria in the year 453, and that the removal to Con-
stantinople took place five centuries later. When that city
was taken by the French in 1204, a canon of Amiens, who
was present, transported it into France, where it was
divided, but into two portions apparently, one being de-
posited at Amiens and the other sent to the Church of St.
Sylvester in Rome. I have also seen a report of two heads,
but without particulars of their whereabouts.
So much concerning the Caput Johannis, but I should
not have had occasion to furnish these instances were it
not for the apparition of an angel carrying a head upon
a salver when the wonders of the Holy Graal were first
manifested at Sarras. But this vision is not found in the
story which connects the Hallowed Sword with the head
43
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
of St. John the Baptist. The Dish, with its content,
is supposed to be a complication occasioned by the inter-
vention of folk-lore elements concerning the head of the
Blessed Bran. The Dish, apart from the head, is almost
always the fourth Hallow in the legends of the Graal —
perhaps, as I shall indicate later, because the Sacred
Vessel, which is the central object of all, is sometimes
identified with the Paschal Dish of the Last Supper and
sometimes with the Chalice of the First Eucharist.
It follows from the considerations of this section that
although there has been a passage of folk-lore materials
through the channel of Graal literature — which passage
has less or more involved their conversion — its real im-
portation into romance has been various elements of
Christian symbolism, doctrine and legend ; it is these,
above all, that we are in a position to know and account
for, and I have made a beginning here. We have, there-
fore, certain lines laid down already for our inquiry which
assure that it will have the aspect of a religious and even
of an ecclesiastical quest.
There is nothing on our part which can be added to
the discoveries of folk-lore scholars, nor have we — except
in a most elementary manner, and for the better under-
standing of our own subject — any need to summarise the
result even of such researches — as these now stand.
This work has been done too well already. We are
entering a new region, and we carry our own warrants.
I need not add that in assuming Celtic or any other
legends, the Church took over its own, because she had
come into possession, by right and by fact, of all the
patrimonies of the Western world.
I want it to be understood, in conclusion as to this
side of the Hallows of the Holy Graal, that the literature
is not to be regarded as a particular extension of the
history of relics, nor should my own design in presenting
the external history of certain sacred objects suffer mis-
construction of this or an allied kind. The compilers of
encyclopaedic dictionaries and handbooks have sometimes
44
The Roots of the House of Meaning
treated the value of such legends, and of the claims which
lie behind them, in a spirit which has been so far serious
that they have pointed out how the multiplicity of claims
in respect of a single object must be held to militate
against the genuineness of any. One Juggernaut effigy
of all that is virulent in heresy took the trouble, centuries
ago, to calculate how many crosses might be formed full-
size from the relics of the one true Cross which were
then extant in the world, and an opponent not less grave
took the further trouble of recalculating to prove that he
was wrong. So also Luther, accepting a caution from
Judas, lamented that so much gold had gone to enshrine
the imputed relics of the Cross when it might have been
given to the poor. The truth is that the veneration of
relics is open to every kind of charge save that which
Protestantism has preferred, and this an enlightened sense
of doctrine and practice enables us to rule out of court
on every count.
It is desirable now to notice a few points which are
likely to be overlooked by the informed student even,
while the unversed reader should know of them that he
may be on his guard hereafter, (i) The German cycle
of the Holy Graal has the least possible connection with
Christian relics ; speaking of the important branches, it
is so much sui generis in its symbolical elements that it
enters scarcely into the same category as the Northern
French romances, with which we shall be dealing chiefly.
(2) No existing reliquary and no story concerning one did
more than provide the great makers of romance with raw
materials and pretexts ; the stories they abandoned in all
cases nearly, and the symbols they exalted by their genius.
(3) As I have once already indicated, but not so expressly,
the knowledge or the rumour of some unknown book had
come to them in an unknown manner, and of this book
neither Fecamp nor its competitive monasteries, abbeys
and holy houses had ever heard a syllable. The general
conclusion of this part is therefore that the growing
literature of the Holy Graal drew from the life of devotion
45
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
in its application to the Mystery of the Eucharist and to
the secondary veneration of relics at the period ; but, on
the other hand, it contributed something of its own life
to stimulate and extend the great doctrine of the mystery,
and the devotion also. The elucidations which have been
here afforded represent but a part of the schedule with
which this section opened ; it is that, however, which is
most needed at the moment, and all that remains will
find its proper place in the later stages of research.
About that mystery in chief of the faith in Christ
which is the only real concern of the Holy Graal, there
are other environments which will appeal to us, though
their time is not yet in our methodical scheme of pro-
gress. There is (a) the state of the official church, so
glorious in some respects, so clouded in others, like a
keeper of sacred things who has been wounded for his
own sins, or like a House of Doctrine against which he
who sold God for money has warred, and not in vain, for
at times he has invaded the precincts and entered even
the sanctuary, though the holy deposit has not been
affected thereby, because by its nature and essence it is at
once removed from his grasp. There is (£) the Church
in Britain and its connections of the Celtic world, having
aspirations of its own, as there is no question — having a
legitimacy of its own, as none can dare to deny — but with
only a local horizon, a local mission, and used, for the
rest, as a tool for ambitious kings, much as the orthodox
claim of the Church at large was the tool of the popes
at need. There is (c) the resounding rumour and there
is the universal wonder of the high impossible quest of
holy wars in Palestine, without which we might have
never had the Graal literature, the romances of chivalry,
or the secret treasures of the disdainful East brought to
the intellectual marts and houses of exchange in the rest-
less, roving, ever-curious kingdoms of the West — king-
doms in travail towards their puberty. There is (^/) — and
of five things to be enumerated, I count this the head
and crown — there is the higher life of sanctity and its
The Roots of the House of Meaning
annals at the Graal period, as the outcome of which the
West went to the East, carrying what it believed to be
the missing talent of gold, without which, as the standard
of all values, all other talents were either debased or
spurious. It was the age of a thousand reflections, at
centuries sometimes of distance, from Dionysius, Augus-
tine, and the first great lights of Christendom ; it was
the age of Hugo de St. Victor, of Bernard, of Bona-
ventura ; it was the age which Thomas of Aquinas had
taken up as plastic matter in his hands, and he shaped
the mind of the world after the image and the likeness
of his own mind in the high places of the schools ; it
was the age of many doctors, who would have known
in their heart of hearts what was the real message of the
Graal literature, and where its key was to be sought.
There is in fine (e} my fifth branch, but this is the sects
of the period, because more than one division of the
Christian world was quaking and working towards the
emancipation which begins by departing from orthodox
doctrine in official religion, but seeing that it begins
wrongly and takes turnings' which are the fatalities of
true direction, so it ends far from God. As to all this,
it is needful to say at this moment, because it is almost
from the beginning, that the Books of the Holy Graal
are among the most catholic of literature, and that
reformations have nothing therein. I say, therefore,
that the vessels are many but the good is one, of which
Galahad beheld the vision.
IV
THE LITERATURE OF THE CYCLE
The cycle of the Holy Graal is put into our hands
like counters which can be arranged after more than one
manner, but that which will obtain reasonably for a specific
purpose may not of necessity conform to the chrono-
logical order which by other considerations would be
47
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
recommended to archeological research. It will be
pertinent, therefore, to say a few words about the classi-
fication which I have adopted for these studies, and this
is the more important because at first sight it may seem
calculated to incur those strictures on the part of recog-
nised learning which, on the whole, I rather think that
I should prefer to disarm. I must in any case justify
myself, and towards this, in the first place, it should be
indicated that my arrangement depends solely from the
indubitable sequence of the texts, as they now stand, and
secondly, by an exercise of implicit faith, from several
palmary findings of scholarship itself. It follows that
the disposition of the literature which has been adopted
for my own purpose is, on the evidence of the texts, a
legitimate way in which to treat that literature. There
are certain texts which arise out of one another, and it is
a matter of logic to group them under their proper
sections. Comparatively few documents of the whole
cycle have reached us in their original form, even sub-
sequently to that period at which the legends were taken
over in a Christian interest, while many of them have
been unified and harmonised so that they can stand
together in a series. It is the relation which has been
thus instituted that I have sought to preserve, because
among the questions which are posed for our considera-
tion there is that of the motive which actuated
successive writers to create texts in succession which,
although in many cases of distinct authorship, are
designed to follow from one another ; as also to re-edit
old texts ; and to adjust works to one another with the
object of presenting in a long series of narratives the
Mystery of the Holy Graal manifested in Britain. The
bulk of the texts as they stand represents the acquisition
completed and certain intentions exhibited to their highest
degree. Hence a disposition which shows this the most
plainly is for my object the reasonable grouping of all,
that object depending from almost the last state of the
literature and differing to this extent from ordinary
The Roots of the House of Meaning
textual criticism, to which the first state is not only
important but vital.
The Graal cycle, as it is understood and as it will be
set forth in these pages, belongs chiefly to France and
Germany. Within these limits in respect of place and
language, there is also a limit of time, for textual
criticism has assigned, under specific reserves, the pro-
duction of the chief works to the fifty years intervening
between the year 1170 and the year 1220. As regards
the reserves, I need only mention here that the romantic
histories of Merlin subsequent to the coronation of
Arthur have not so far been regarded by scholarship
as an integral part of the Graal literature, while one
later German text has been ignored practically in
England. Seeing that within the stated period and
perhaps later, many of the texts were subjected, as I have
just indicated, to editing and even to re-editing, it seems
to follow that approximate dates of composition would
be the most precarious of all arrangements for my special
design. As regards that course which I have chosen, I
have found that the French romances fall into three
divisions and that they cannot be classified otherwise.
The elaborate analysis of contents which I have prefixed
to each division will of itself convey the general scheme,
but I must speak of it more expressly in the present
case because of the implicits with which we shall be
concerned presently.
We may assume, and this is correct probably, that the
earliest extant romances of the Holy Graal — the specula-
tive versions which have been supposed in the interests
of folk-lore being, of course, set apart — are the first part
of the Conte del Graal written by Chretien de Troyes,
and the metrical Joseph of Arimath<ea by Robert de
Borron — in the original draft thereof. In the earlier
records of criticism the preference was given to the latter,
but it is exercised now in respect of the former text.
Besides the folk-lore and non-Christian legends of
Peredur and the Bowl of Plenty — which shall be con-
49 D
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
sidered in their proper place — there was another class of
traditions taken over in the interests of the Holy Graal.
That the Arthurian legend had pre-existed in another
form is not only shown by the early metrical literature of
northern and southern France but by isolated English
texts, such as the fifteenth-century Morte cT Arthur,
which suggest older prototypes that are not now extant.
It is shown otherwise by the Welsh Mabinogion, which,
much or little as they have borrowed in their subsisting
form from French sources, point clearly to indigenous
traditions. The North - French romances were re-
founded in the interest — whatever that was — of the Graal
sub-surface design. The most notable example in an-
other sense was perhaps the Merlin cycle, which took
over the floating traditions concerning the prophet and
enchanter and created two divergent romances, each
having the object of connecting Merlin with the Graal.
The general process was something after the manner
following: (i) Lays innumerable, originally oral but
drifting into the written form; (2) the same lays re-
edited in the Arthurian interest 5(3) the Graal mystery at
first independent of Arthurian legend, or such at least is
the strong inference concerning it ; (4) the Graal legend
married to Arthurian romance, the connection being at
first incidental ; (5) the Arthurian tradition after it had
been assumed entirely in the interests of the Holy Graal.
I recur, therefore, to my original thesis, that there is
one aspect at least in which for my purpose the superior
importance resides not in the primordial elements of the
literature but in their final and unified form. As a
typical example, it is customary to recognise that there
was an early state of the Book of the Holy Graal which is
not now extant. The text, as we have it, is later than
most of the cycle to which it belongs properly, yet it poses
as the introduction thereto. Now the early draft may or
may not have preceded, chronologically speaking, the
corresponding first versions of some of the connecting
texts, and in either case when the time came for the
5°
The Roots of the House of Meaning
whole literature to be harmonised it was and remains
entitled to the priority which it claimed, but that priority
is in respect of its place in the series and not in respect
of time. The re-editing of the romances in the Graal
interest must be, however, distinguished carefully from
the innumerable alterations which have been made other-
wise but to which no ulterior motive can be attributed.
There is further no difficulty in assuming (i) that the
passage of folk-lore into Christian symbolical literature
may have followed a fixed plan ; (2) that when late
editing exhibits throughout a number of texts some
defined scheme of instituted correlation, there may have
been again a design in view, and it is this design which is
the concern of my whole research.
The places of the Graal legend, its reflections and its
rumours, are France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain,
Portugal, England and Wales.
In matters of literature France and England were
united during the Anglo-Norman period, and when this
period was over England produced nothing except ren-
derings of French texts and one compilation therefrom.
Germany had an independent version of the legend
derived by its own evidence from a French source which
is now unknown. The German cycle therefore differs in
important respects from the French cycle ; the central
figure is a characteristic hero in each, but the central
sacred object is different, the subsidiary persons are
different in certain cases — or have at least undergone
transformation — and, within limits, the purpose is ap-
parently diverse. The Dutch version is comparatively
an old compilation from French sources, some of which
either cannot be identified or in the hands of the poet
who translated them they have passed out of recognition.
Italy is represented only by translations from the French
and one of these was the work of Rusticien de Pise, who
has been idly accredited with the production of sources
rather than derivatives of the legend, and this in the
Latin tongue. There is also another compilation, the
51
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Tavo/a Ritonda, but in both instances more than the
names of the MSS. seems unknown to scholars. The
Italian cycle is not of importance to any issue of the
literature, either directly or otherwise, and so far as
familiarity is concerned it is almost ignored by modern
students. The inclusion of Spain in the present schedule
of places might seem merely a question of liberality, for
the Spanish version of the Graal legend exists only in
(i) the inferred allusions of a certain romance of Merlin,
printed at Burgos in 1498, and (2) in a romance of
Merlin and the Quest of the Holy Graal, printed at Seville
in the year 1500. Of the first work only a single copy
is known to exist, and no French or English scholar seems
to have seen it ; the second has so far escaped the
attention of scholarship, outside the bare record of
its existence. This notwithstanding, according to the
German cycle, the source of the legend and its true
presentation in at least one department thereof, are to be
looked for in Spain, and the first account concerning it
was received by a Spanish Jew. Portugal, so far as I am
aware, is responsible only for a single printed text, but it
represents a French original which is otherwise lost ; it is
therefore important and it should receive full considera-
tion at a later stage. As regards Wales, it is very difficult
and fortunately unnecessary to speak at this initial stage.
Of the Graal, as we find it in France, there is no in-
digenous Welsh literature, but there are certain primeval
traditions and bardic remanents which are held to be
fundamental elements of the cycle, and more than one of
the questing knights are found among the Mabinogion
heroes. In the thirteenth century and later, the legend,
as we now have it, was carried across the marches, but it
is represented only by translations.
For the purpose of the classification which follows, we
must set aside for the moment all whatsoever that has
come down to us concerning quests, missions and heroes
in which the central object known as the Holy Graal
does not appear. We shall deal with these fully when
The Roots of the House of Meaning
we come to the study of the texts severally ; we are now
dealing generally, and there is nothing to our purpose
in the Welsh Peredur or in the English Syr Percyvelle.
Whatever its importance to folk-lore, the Welsh Peredur,
in respect of its literary history, is a tangled skein which
it will not repay us to unravel more than is necessary
absolutely. It has been compared, and no doubt rightly
enough, to the Lay of the Great Fool, but, whether we
have regard to his foolishness or to the nature of his
mission, Peredur never interests and also never signifies.
His mission is confined to the extermination of sor-
ceresses, and among these of such sorceresses as those of
Gloucester. On the other hand, the English metrical
romance is entitled to less consideration except for its
claims as literature, and it is only in its speculative
attribution to a lost prototype that it has concerned
scholarship. It must be understood at the same time
that both texts are essential to the literary history of the
whole subject from the standpoint of folk-lore. The
remaining works may be classified into cycles, according
either to affinities of intention or to the seat of their
origin, and among these the Northern French texts fall
into three divisions, the distribution of two being, within
their own lines, a chronological arrangement strictly.
The Conte del Graal is allocated properly after the
cycle of folk-lore — as it is reflected at a far distance in the
non-Graal texts that survive. The fact that the Lesser
Chronicles are given a priority of place in respect of the
Greater Chronicles does not for that reason mean that all
their parts are assumed to be older than all the documents
contained in the third division. In the third division
itself the chronological arrangement has been abandoned,
as it is more important for my purpose to show the
codification of the documents by which they have been
harmonised into a series rather than to place them in an
order of dates which would at best be approximate only
and would represent the first drafts rather than the texts
as they remain. The divisions are therefore as follows : —
53
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
A. The Conte del Graal. Let me say, in the first
place, that our problems are not the authorship of an
individual prose or metrical romance, not even the com-
parative dates of certain documents as they now stand
actually, but whether we, who as mystics have come to
know the significance and value of the hidden life of
doctrine, can determine by research the extent to which
the intimations of such doctrine found in the Graal
literature are true or false lights. Now, I suppose that
there is no very serious question as to the literary
greatness of Chretien de Troyes, while some of the
sequels and alternatives added to his unfinished poem are
not perhaps unworthy to rank with his own work ; the
collection, however, as a whole, offers very little to our
purpose. So far as Chretien himself carried the story, we
are not only unable to gather clearly what he intended
by the Graal, but why he had adventured so far from his
proper path as to plan and even to begin such a story.
If he had gone further, as I believe personally, we should
have found that the Sacred Vessel, Telesma, or Wonder-
Working Palladium carried with it the same legend as it
carried for most other writers ; but we do not know and
it matters less than little, for the Conte del Graal at its
best is Nature in the pronaos of the temple testifying
that she is properly prepared. If we grant this claim,
we know that in Chretien at least, however she may have
been prepared conventionally, she has not been sanctified.
The alternative termination of Gerbert carries the story
up to a higher level, moving it in the direction of
Wolfram's Parsifal, yet not attaining its height. So
far as any mystic term is concerned, the great Conte is
rather after the manner of a hindrance which calls to be
taken out of the way ; it is useless for the higher issues,
and even for the business of scholarship it seems of late
days to have lapsed from its first importance.
The chief additamentum of this cycle is the unprinted
metrical Perceval, which is preserved in the library at
Berne. The desire of the eyes of students is a certain
54
The Roots of the House of Meaning
lost Provensal poem, connected by the hypothesis with
Perceval, as to which we shall hear more fully in con-
nection with the German cycle of the Holy Graal.
The Chretien portion of the Conte del Graal was
written not later than 1189, and the most recent views
assign it somewhere between that year and 1175.
Manessier and Gerbert are believed to have produced
their rival conclusions between 1216 and 1225. As
regards the Chretien portion, it has been recognised,
and may be called obvious, that it " presupposes an
early history." This being so, it does not seem un-
reasonable to infer that the first form of the early history
was either (a) the first draft of De Borron's poem, or
(£) it corresponded to the book from which De Borron
drew and of which, Chretien notwithstanding, he is
probably the most faithful, perhaps even the only repre-
sentative. On the other hand, if the particular quest
does not draw directly or indirectly from the particular
history, then my own view is that in the question of
date but little can be held to depend from the priority
of Chretien's poem — which is a quest — or that of De
Borron — which is a history. I have therefore no call to
indicate a special persuasion. For what it is worth, the
inferences from admitted opinion seem to leave the
priority of De Borron still tenable in the first form of
his poem, and for the rest I hold it as certain that my
classification, although a novelty, is justified and even
necessary ; but exact chronological arrangement, in so
tinkered a cycle of literature as that of the Holy
Graal, is perhaps scarcely possible, nor is it my concern
exactly.
B. The cycle of Robert de Borron, being that which
is connected more especially and accurately with his
name, and herein is comprised : —
i. The metrical romance of Joseph of Arimathaea, in
which we learn the origin, early history and migration
of the Graal westward, though it does not show that
the Sacred Vessel came actually into Britain.
55
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
2. The Lesser Holy Graal, called usually Le Petit
St. Graal. We have here a prose version of the poem
by Robert de Borron, which accounts for its missing
portions, but the two documents are not entirely
coincident.
3. The Early History of Merlin, and this represents in
full another metrical romance of the same authorship
but of which the first 500 lines are alone extant.
4. The Didot Perceval, but this text is regarded as
a later composition, though it seems to contain some
primitive elements of the quest. Its designation is
explained by the fact that it was at one time in the
possession of M. Firmin Didot, the well-known Parisian
bookseller. Its analogies with the poem of Chretien
de Troyes are thought to indicate a common source of
knowledge rather than a reflection or derivation from
one to another. This romance has been also somewhat
generally regarded as the prose version of another lost
poem by Robert de Borron. The additamentum of this
cycle is the fuller unprinted codex of the Didot Perceval
preserved in the library at Modena.
These documents constitute what may be termed the
Lesser Histories or Chronicles of the Holy Graal.
Their characteristics in common, by which they are
grouped into a cycle, are (i) the idea that certain secret
and sacramental words were transmitted from apostolic
times and were taken from East to West ; (2) the succes-
sion of Brons as Keeper of the Holy Graal immediately
after Joseph of Arimathaea.
The metrical Joseph may have been written soon after
1170, but the balance of opinion favours the last years
of the twelfth century. Criticism supposes that there
were two drafts, of which only the second is extant.
It was succeeded by the early Merlin. As regards
the Didot Perceval, this is known chiefly by a manuscript
ascribed to the end of the thirteenth century.
C. The Cycle of the Greater Holy Graal and the Great
Quest, comprising : —
56
The Roots of the House of Meaning
1 . The Saint Graal, that is, The Book of the Holy Graal,
or Joseph of Arimathxa, called also the First Branch of the
Romances of the Round Table and the Grand Saint Graal.
The last designation is due perhaps to its dimensions;
but it may be held to deserve the title on higher con-
siderations, as the most important development of the
legend in its so-called historical aspects, by which I mean
apart from the heroes of the various quests. The work
has been widely attributed to Walter Map, sometime
archdeacon of Oxford and Chaplain to Henry II. of
England. While the trend of present opinion is to
regard it as of unknown authorship, I think that the
ascription is not untenderly regarded by scholarship, and
recognising, as we must, that evidence is wanting to
support the traditional view, no personage of the period
is perhaps antecedently more likely. Unfortunately
more than one other romance, which seems distinct
generically in respect of its style, has received the same
attribution. The Greater Holy Graal was intended to
create a complete sequence and harmony between those
parts of the cycle with which it was more especially
concerned, and the Galahad Quest, as we have it, may
represent the form of one document which it intended to
harmonise. The alternative is that there was another
version of the Quest which arose out of the later Merlin,
or that such a version was intended. I believe in fine
that my order is true and right.
2. The later Merlin romances, and because the
Vulgate Merlin is in certain respects, though not perhaps
expressly, a harmony of De Borron's cycle and that of
the Book of the Holy Graal, drawing something from both
sources, I refer here more especially to the Huth
Merlin and the secret archives of the Graal from which
it claims to derive. The history of Merlin is taken by
the first text up to his final enchantment in the forest
of Broceliande, and in particular to that point when the
knight Gawain hears the last utterance of the prophet.
An analogous term is reached by the Huth Merlin in
57
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
respect of Bademagus, through a long series of entirely
distinct episodes ; it should be stated that the references
to the Holy Graal are few in both romances, but they
are pregnant with meaning.
As an addendum to these branches, there is the late
text called The Prophecies of Merlin, which I know only
by the printed edition of Rouen. It has wide variations
from the texts mentioned previously in so far as it covers
their ground, but it has also its Graal references. It has
been regarded as a continuation of the early prose
Merlin, and in this sense it is alternative to the Vulgate
and the Huth texts.
3. The great prose Lancelot, which in spite of its
subject-matter is, properly understood, a book of high
sanctity, or it lies at least on the fringe of this description,
and towards the close passes therein.
4. The Longer Prose Perceval le Gallois, or High
History of the Holy Graal, which offers a term and con-
clusion of the Graal mystery by way of alternative to or
substitute for that of the Galahad quest. It is like a rite
which has narrowly escaped perfection ; it holds certain
keys, but the doors which they open are not doors which
give entrance to the greatest mysteries. Herein the king
is dead, and with all the claims of Perceval it is a little
difficult to say of him : Long live the king ! The
romance does not harmonise with the other histories of
Perceval ; it has elements which are particular to itself
and the air of an independent creation. It should be
added that it draws also from sources to us unknown
and has haunting suggestions of familiarity with the
source of Wolfram. So far as there has been any
critical opinion expressed concerning it in England, it
must be said that it has missed the mark.
5. The Quest of the Holy Graal, called also The Last
Book of the Round Table, containing the term of the
mystery as given in the Chronicle concerning Galahad
the haul prince, and this is the quest par excellence, the
head and crown of the Graal legend. I know that this
58
The Roots of the House of Meaning
statement will be challenged in certain high quarters of
special research, but before any one speaks of human
interest he should say, or at least in his heart : The
Life Everlasting ; and this stated, it must be added that
all which is commonly understood by human interest,
all which has been sometimes regarded as characterising
the chief quests and one of them in particular, is ex-
cluded by the Great Prose Quest. We have in place
thereof a spiritual romance, setting forth under this
guise a mystery of the soul in its progress. It is only
the books of perfection which make at once for high
rites and gorgeous pageants of literature. Hereof is the
Galahad Quest.
These five romances constitute what I have termed the
Greater Chronicles of the Holy Graal. It will have
been understood that the Longer Prose Perceval and the
Great Prose Quest exclude one another ; they stand as
alternatives in the tabulation. The characteristics of this
cycle are (i) the succession of Joseph II. as keeper of
the Holy Graal immediately after his father and during
the latter's lifetime, this dignity not being conferred
upon Brons, either then or later; (2) the substitution
of a claim in respect of apostolical succession — which
placed the Graal keepers in a superior position to any
priesthood holding from the apostles — for that of a secret
verbal formula applied in respect of the Eucharist.
The dates of the texts which are included in the
Greater Chronicles differ widely so far as the extant
manuscripts are concerned. The canon of the Graal
literature was not in reality closed till the end of the
thirteenth century if these manuscripts are to be regarded
as the final drafts. The lost antecedent documents
cannot, of course, be assigned. It is suggested, for
example, that the prototype of the Book of the Holy Graal
and the Quest of Galahad preceded the continuations
of Chretien. The unique text comprised in the Huth
Merlin has been dated about 1225 or 1230, the MS.
itself belonging to the last quarter of the thirteenth
59
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
century. There was a fourth part which is now wanting ;
it contained a version of the Galahad quest, and though
it has been concluded that it corresponds to the extant
text, the Huth Merlin embodies allusions to episodes in
the lost part which are not to be met with in the Galahad
romance as it now stands.
The additamenta of this cycle are the quests of the
Holy Graal in the Spanish and Portuguese versions, and
one rendering into Welsh. There is also material of
importance in the draft of the Great Quest printed at
Rouen in 1488 together with the Lancelot and the
Morte <F Arthur ) as also in the Paris edition of 1533.
Finally, the English metrical chronicle of Hardyng con-
tains a version of the Galahad legend which differs in
some express particulars from anything with which we
are acquainted in the original romance texts.
D. The German Cycle. The Parsifal of Wolfram
is the high moral sense saying that it has received the
light, and I know not how we could accept the testi-
mony even if that which uttered it had risen from the
dead. I am speaking, however, of the German legend
only in one of its phases, and at a later stage I shall
exhibit every material which will enable us to judge
of its importance. The Conte del Graal, except in its
latest portions, and then by chance allusions or deriva-
tions at a far distance, has nothing to tell us of secret
words, Eucharistic or otherwise ; it has also no hint
of any super-apostolical succession. It is the same with
Wolfram's Parsifal; the legend, as it stands therein,
is in fact revolutionised, or rather it is distinct generi-
cally, and the quest, though it follows the broad lines
of the other Percevals, has gone under I know not what
greatness of alteration. If the Northern French stories
concerning the widow's son could be likened to a high
grade in Masonry, then assuredly the German version
would be that rite rectified. The Titurel of Albrecht
von Scharfenberg, which deserves a notice which it has
never received in England, seems to suggest that there
60
The Roots of the House of Meaning
is a greater light in the East than has been found as
an abiding presence in the West, and except in a very
high mystic sense, a sense much higher than is to be
found in any of the romances, this suggestion offers
the token of illusion. In fine, to dispose of this cycle,
let me say that the metrical romance of Diu Crone by
Heinrich von dem Turlin has no secret message, even in
the order of phantasy. At this day we rest assured, or
those at least whose opinion matters anything, that the
most hopeless of all worlds to enter in search of wisdom
is the world of ghosts. It happens, however, that in
Heinrich's poem ghosts, or the dead alive, are the cus-
todians of the mysteries. At the same time they may
hold the kind of office which it is possible to confer on
Sir Gawain, who is the hero of this voided quest. I
speak, of course, in comparison with the palmary texts
by which the Quest itself has entered into the holy
places of literature.
It will follow from the above tabulation that while
the Graal literature is divisible into several cycles there
are three only which belong to our particular concern.
The classification which I have made is serviceable there-
fore in yet another way, since it enables us, firstly, to
set apart that which is nihil ad rem nostram catholicam et
sanctam, and, secondly, to come into our own.
THE IMPLICITS OF THE GRAAL MTSTERT
There are several literatures which exhibit with various
degrees of plainness the presence of that sub-surface
meaning to which I have referred in respect of the
Graal legend ; but there, as here, so far as the outward
sense is concerned, it is nearly always suggested rather than
affirmed. This additional sense may underlie the entire
body of a literature, or it may be merely some concealed
intention or a claim put forward evasively. The sub-
61
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
surface significance of the Graal literature belongs mainly
to the second class. It is from this point of view that
my departure is here made, and if it is a warrantable
assumption, some portion at least of the literature will
prove, explicitly or otherwise, to contain these elements
in no uncertain manner. As a matter of fact, we shall
find them, though, as I have indicated, it is rather by the
way of things which are implied, or which follow as in-
ferences, but they are not for this reason less clear or less
demonstrable. The implicits of the Graal literature are,
indeed, more numerous than we should expect to meet with
at the period in books of the western world. They may
almost exceed, for example, those which are imbedded
in the alchemic writings of the late twelfth or early thir-
teenth century, though antecedently we should be pre-
pared to find them more numerous in the avowedly
secret books of Hermetic adepts.
The most important of the Graal implicits are those
from which my study depends in its entirety, but there
are others which in the present place need only be speci-
fied, as they belong more properly to the consideration of
individual texts. There is, in fine, one implicit which is
reserved to the end, because it is that upon which the
debate centres.
The implicit in chief of that cycle which I have termed
the Lesser Histories, or Chronicles of the Holy Graal,
is that certain secret words, having an attributed appli-
cation to the Sacrament in chief of the Altar, and to certain
powers of judgment, were communicated to Joseph of
Arimathaea by Christ Himself, and that these remained in
reserve, being committed from keeper to keeper by the
oral method only.
It must be noted, though more especially for con-
sideration at a later stage, that the secret words are also
represented in the poem of Robert de Borron as words of
power on the material plane ; that is to say, outside any
efficacy which they may be assumed to possess in conse-
crating the elements at the Mass. They are " sweet,
62
The Roots of the House of Meaning
precious and holy words." It is these qualities which
stand out more strongly in the metrical romance than the
Eucharistic side of the formula, and there seems, there-
fore, a certain doubt as to De Borron's chief intention
respecting their office. But in the Lesser Holy Graal the
implicit of the metrical romance passes into actual expres-
sion, and it becomes more clear in consequence that the
secret words were those used, ex hypothesi, by the cus-
todians of the Holy Graal in the consecration of the
elements of the Eucharist.
Let it be understood that I am not seeking to press
this inference, but am stating an aspect only. If the
references to the secret words in the metrical Joseph
do not offer a sacramental connection with full clearness
—because they are also talismanic and protective —
their operation in the latter respects must be regarded as
subsidiary and apart from the real concern of the Holy
Graal. When all possible issues have been exhausted,
the matter remains Eucharistic in the final terms of its
appearance, and behind it there is that which lies wholly
perdu for the simple senses in sources that are concealed
utterly. It is further to be noted that any Eucharistic
appearance has nothing to do with transubstantiation,
of which there is no trace in the Lesser Chronicles.
Finally, the sole custodian of the Sacred Vessel through
a period of many centuries lived in utter seclusion, and
after the words were imparted to Perceval he was in-
terned apparently for ever. The message of the Lesser
Chronicles seems to be that something was brought into
Britain which it was intended to manifest, but no mani-
festation took place.
When the Book of the Holy Graal was produced as an
imputed branch of Arthurian literature, there is no need
to say that the Roman Pontiff was then as now, at least
in respect of his claim, the first bishop of Christendom,
and, by the evidence of the traditional claim, he derived
from St. Peter, who was episcopus primus et pontifex
primordialis. This notwithstanding, the romance attri-
63
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
butes the same title to a son of Joseph of Arimathaea,
who is called the Second Joseph, and here is the first
suggestion of a concealed motive therein. The Book of
the Holy Graal 'and the metrical romance of De Borron are
the historical texts in chief of their particular cycles, and
it does not follow, or at least in all cases, that their
several continuations or derivatives are extensions of the
implicits which I have mentioned. In the first case, the
early prose Merlin has an implied motive of its own which
need not at the moment detain us, and the Didot Perceval
is of dubious authenticity as a sequel, by which I mean
that it does not fully represent the mind of the earlier
texts, though it has an importance of its own and also
its own implicits. On the other hand, in what I have
termed the Greater Chronicles of the Holy Graal there
is, if possible, a more complete divergence in respect of
the final document, and I can best explain it by saying
that if we could suppose for a moment that the Book of
the Holy Graal was produced in the interests of a pan-
Britannic Church, or alternatively of some secret school
of religion, then the Great Prose Quest, or Chronicle of
Galahad, might represent an interposition on the part
of the orthodox Church to take over the literature. At
the same time the several parts of each cycle under
consideration belong thereto and cannot be located
otherwise.
The further divisions under which I have scheduled
the body-general of the literature, and especially the
German cycle, will be considered at some length in their
proper place, when their explicit and implied motives
will be specified ; for the present it will be sufficient to
say that the German poems do not put forward the claims
with which I am now dealing, namely, the secret formula
in respect of the De Borron cycle and a super-apostolical
succession in respect of the Book of the Holy Graal, and that
which is classed therewith. We do not know, at least
here in England, that Wolfram had prototypes to follow
outside those to which he himself confesses. As to these
The Roots of the House of Meaning
he rejected one of them, and we have means only by
inference of ascertaining what he derived from the other.
It may seem certain, however, for many that his acknow-
ledged exemplar could not have originated all those
generic distinctions which characterise the German Parsifal^
and the fact of what Wolfram borrowed throws perhaps
into clearer light all that which he created, or alternatively
it indicates an unknown source the nature of which we
can determine only by reference to schools of symbolism
which cannot be properly discussed except towards the
close of our inquiry.
I have adopted what I consider to be the best way of
treating the whole cycle for the purpose in view. I have
said already that it is not an instruction to scholarship,
nor is it an appeal thereto, except for reasonable tolerance
regarding an issue external to its own, and then even only
in the sense of that forbearance which I should be ex-
pected to extend on my own part to the probability of a
speculative date, or the existence of a lost text, which
scholars may favour in a particular case.
If certain mystic sects took over at a given period the
hypothesis and symbolism of alchemy, if they used them
as a secret language to enshrine their researches and dis-
coveries in a wholly different region, it is obviously
useless for any one to have recourse to the physical
alchemists — otherwise than as a light on method and
especially on the antithetical use of terms — for an ex-
planation of the later mode and intention. If also some
other or any mystic sect appropriated certain crude
legends, prehistoric or what not, which they magnified,
developed and transformed, designing to use them for
the furtherance of a particular scheme to which they were
themselves dedicated ; it is not then less obvious that the
original form of such legends will in no wise help us to
understand the later position to which they have been
assigned by that school. In these few words the whole
thesis of scholarship concerning the sources of the Graal
elements is disposed of for our purpose, though with
65 E
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
many titles of honour, and the alternative with which we
are concerned can be put no less shortly.
As regards both the claims with which I am at the
present moment more especially concerned, we must
remember that although we are dealing with a depart-
ment of romantic literature, their content does not be-
long to romance ; the faculty of invention in stories is
one thing, and I think that modern criticism has some-
times made insufficient allowance for its spontaneity, yet
through all the tales of chivalry it worked within certain
lines. It would not devise secret Eucharistic words or
put forward strange claims which almost make void the
Christian apostolate in favour of some unheard-of suc-
cession communicated directly from Christ after Pente-
cost. We know absolutely that this kind of machinery
belongs to another order. If it does not, then the apo-
cryphal gospels were imbued with the romantic spirit,
and the explanation of Manichean heresy may be sought
in a flight of verse. In particular, the higher under-
standing of secret consecration is not a question of litera-
ture, but of the communication to the human soul of
the Divine Nature. It lies behind the Eucharistic
doctrine of the Latin Church, but on the external side
that doctrine — and of necessity — by the hypothesis of
transubstantiation, communicates the Divine Humanity
rather than the Eternal and Divine Substance.
I suppose that what follows from the claims has not
entered into the consciousness of official scholarship, be-
cause it is otherwise concerned, but it may have entered
already into the thought of those among my readers
whose preoccupations are similar to my own, and I will
now state it in a summary manner. As the secret words
of consecration, the extra-efficacious words which must
be pronounced over the sacramental elements so that
they may be converted into the arch-natural Eucharist,
have, by the hypothesis, never been expressed in writing,
or alternatively have been enshrined only in a lost or
hypothetical book, it follows that since the Graal was
66
The Roots of the House of Meaning
withdrawn from the world, together with its custodians,
the Christian Church has had to be content with what it
has, namely, a substituted sacrament. And as the super-
apostolical succession, also by the hypothesis, must have
ceased from the world when the last keeper of the Graal
followed his vessel into heaven, the Christian Church has
again been reduced to the ministration of some other and
apparently lesser ordination. It follows, therefore, that
the Graal literature is not only a cycle of romance
originating from many traditions, but is also, in respect
of those claims — and even in a marked manner — a
departure from tradition.
If I were asked to adjudicate on the value of such
claims, I should say that the doctrine is the body of the
Lord and its right understanding is the spirit. Whoso-
ever therefore puts forward a claim on behalf of secret
formulae in connection with the Eucharistic Rite may
appear in the higher hermeneutics to have forgotten one
thing which is needful — that there are efficacious consecra-
tions everywhere. The question of apostolical succession
would seem also in the same position, because the truly
valid transmissions are those of grace itself, which com-
municates from the source of grace direct to the soul ;
and the essence of the sacerdotal office is that those who
have received supernatural life should assist others so to
prepare their ground that they may also in due season,
but always from the same source, become spiritually
alive. If there is another and higher understanding of
any apostolical warrant, I do not know what it is. It
remains, however, that the implicits with which I have
been dealing are actually the implicits in chief of the
Graal books, and that they do not make for harmony
with the teaching of the orthodox churches does not
need stating. From whence therefore and with what
intention were they imported into the body of romance ?
Before this question can be answered we shall have to pro-
ceed much further in the consideration of the literature.
The few people who have approached the Graal legend
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
with any idea of its significance — I will not say from the
mystic standpoint, but from that of a secret tradition per-
petuated through Christian times, or a certain remanent
thereof — have been wholly unequipped in respect of
textual knowledge and in a manner of official religious
training. They have, therefore, missed the points.
Scholarship, on the other hand, has been well trained in
its proper groove, but it has had no eyes for another and
more especially for any mystic aspect. I am about to
tabulate a few facts and to draw from them several
inferences which have not been noted previously.
The Graal in the Graal Castle appeared on certain
occasions in connection with the Mass, but it was, for
the most part, manifested only at a feast. There it
operated sometimes in relation to the idea of sustenance,
but seemingly by way of transmutation. Subject to a
single exception, it was not itself eaten or drunk, but
it was passed over food and wine when these were
available. When they were not forthcoming, it pro-
duced the notion of rare refection. The particular
vessel — understood usually as a cup or chalice — which,
as we shall see, was, under the distinctive name of Graal,
the chief Hallow of the Castle, contained, however, blood
and water, without increase, of which there is no record,
or diminution, of which there is also no record, though
on one occasion which passes all understanding it might
have been supposed to occur. It was therefore solely a
relic of great virtue and miraculous efficacy. We shall
see in what manner, at the end of various quests, it
was taken to heaven, or at least into deeper seclusion ;
but this, in spite of the Eucharistic implicit, did not
mean, in the minds of the makers of romance, any sacra-
mental decrease, because it is obvious from all the texts
that Mass was said independently in church and hermitage
while the Graal was still in the castle. The indubitable
inference from the Book of the Holy Graal, and indeed from
De Borron's poem, is that Britain was entirely heathen
when Joseph came thereto, and it might therefore follow
68
The Roots of the House of Meaning
that its priesthood held subsequently from him. In the
later and longer text the claim of Robert de Borron is
voided, or rather has undergone substitution ; there are
no secret words, of consecration or otherwise ; the Eucha-
ristic formula is given in full, and its variations, such
as they are, from that of the Latin rite, bear traces of
oriental influence derived through a Gallican channel
and offer nothing to our purpose. In this case, and
so far certainly as England was concerned, when the
time came for the Graal to be taken away, that removal
signified at most the loss of a great hallow, a precious
relic, and, this granted, things remained as they were for
all ecclesiastical purposes. In connection with the re-
cession, a period was put to certain times of adventure,
aspects of enchantment, inhibition and disaster, much as
if a sovereign pontiff had laid the city or land of Logres
under a long interdict and had at length removed it,
one only sanctuary, during the whole period, remaining
free from suspension.
The question therefore arises as to what was the
nature of the pre-eminence ascribed to Joseph and his
line. I speak here so far as its object and intention were
concerned, and, of course, the readiest answer will be
sought in the secret aspirations of the Celtic Church ;
but we shall see in the end that they are inadequate.
There is another explanation which is not only ready to
our hand, but is so plausible that it is desirable to exer-
cise a certain caution against it. I would say, therefore,
that the claims with which we are concerned must be
distinguished from doctrinal confusions and errors of
theological ignorance ; of these we have full evidence
otherwise. They are to be accounted for in the most
natural of all manners, but, whether explicit or implied,
the claims of Eucharistic efficacy and supereminence in
succession carry with them an evidence of set purpose
which makes it impossible to enter them in any category
of mere blunders. I say this with the greater certainty
because every concealed sense which we can trace in the
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
literature must be held to co-exist with manifest surface
insufficiency even within its own province, and more espe-
cially regarding the Eucharist. We shall learn towards
the term of our inquiry that this fact offers evidence in
itself that the real mystery of the Graal was brought
from a great distance — not exactly in time or place, but
in the matter of connection with its source. I should add
that other concealed literatures offer similar difficulties, as,
for example, those which are constituted by the grossness
of the Talmud, the barbarisms of the Zohar and other
Midrashim, or the scientific fatuities of Latin alchemy.
In conclusion for the moment as to this part, if I have
spoken as though there were some fundamental spirit of
rivalry to the external Church indicated by the fact of
the romances, it is pre-eminently desirable to state that
there is no intention, at least on my part, to present the
Graal Mystery as a secret process at work outside the
Church. It was assuredly working from within, as if in
the opinion of those who held its keys they looked that
it would act as a leaven and accomplish some modifica-
tion in the entire mass. It would be a mistake to
suppose that the Eucharistic and super-apostolical claims
denied those which have their authority in the New
Testament and in the outer offices of the Church.
The institutions of the one remain as we know it already
on sacred evidence ; as to the other, its validity is in
no sense diminished, but the presence of a still higher
or at least of a distinct warrant is indicated, and it is of
the essence thereof that it is not in competition ; it is
a secret thing, but it might have been manifested more
openly, if the world had been worthy : the world, how-
ever, was so unworthy that the Palladium was taken
still farther away. One evidence of the whole position
is that the apostolate of Joseph II. is compared with that
of the known apostles in other countries than Britain,
and without diminution of either. This notwithstanding,
there remains the irresistible suspicion of the external
Church at the suggestion that one who was outside the
70
The Roots of the House of Meaning
chosen twelve is represented as the first to consecrate the
Eucharist under an imprescriptible title and to receive
the benefit of installation in the episcopal chair ; Peter,
who in the days of his Master understood so little, seems
to take an inferior place. But if, as I believe, the im-
plicits of the Graal literature are the rumour rather than
the replica of secret sanctuary doctrine, there is pro-
bably a better understanding of both than can be found
imbedded in the texts. The true intention may have
concerned a statement of higher experience in the com-
munication of the Divine Substance ; or, in still more
simple language, the external Eucharist conveys Christ
symbolically, but the attainment of Christ in the higher
consciousness offers a direct experience. The succession,
the modes of ordination in a company of sanctity who
have thus attained is ex hypothesi and de facto of a different
order than that which, also ex hypothesi and per doctrinam
sanctam, is conveyed from one to another by the episcopal
intention. We have, however, to take things as they are
offered to us in the official churches and in the glorious
literatures of the soul, ascribing to them that sense in
which we can understand them best, so only that it is
our highest sense.
In conclusion as to the greater implicits, seeing that
the import of the Secret Words in the cycle of Robert
de Borron has eluded critical analysis, while that of the
extra-apostolical succession was appreciated — it is sixty
years since, and has occasioned scarcely a notice — by Paulin
Paris, there is one thing at least obvious — that the second
is more largely written on the surface of the particular
texts than the first, and when we come to consider in
their order the romances comprised in the cycle of the
Lesser Chronicles, we shall find that there are several
difficulties. It is only after their grave and full evalua-
tion that I have put forward in this section the possession
of certain secret words in relation to the Eucharist as
being one of the two sovereign implicits of the Graal
literature.
71
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
The lesser implicits may, for purposes of convenience,
be tabulated simply as follows : —
a. The Implicits of Moses and Simeon.
b. The Implicits of the Merlin legend.
c. The Implicits of the Graal keepers.
d. The Implicits of the several Quests and the dis-
tinctions thereto belonging.
I recognise that the general subject of these and the
other subsurface meanings is at this stage much too
advanced for the reader, who is perhaps wholly unskilled,
and hence those that are major I have sketched only in
outline and those that are minor I have limited to a
simple enumeration : it has been necessary to define all,
so that the scope of the literature may be indicated in
respect of our proper concern even from the beginning.
After the problems which they offer have been studied
at length in the light of the texts themselves, we shall
turn for further help to certain coincident schools of
symbolism.
72
BOOK II
MTSTER1ES OF THE HOLT GRAAL IN
MANIFESTATION AND REMOVAL
THE ARGUMENT
I. A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN ROOT-
SECRETS INCLUDED IN THE WHOLE SUBJECT. — Further
considerations concerning the several groups of the literature —
Quest versions and versions of early history — The Suppressed
IVord of the Perceval Quests — The suppressed sacramental
formula — The secret school of ordination — The passing of the
sacraments. II. THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOWS,
AND IN THE FlRST PLACE A GENERAL INTRODUCTION
CONCERNING THEM. — Their powers and offices — Their
passage from East to West — The Hallows in Britain — An
alternative division of the cycle — Texts of the sacramental
claims — The implied mystery of the Hallows — The four
Hallow s-in- chief. III. THE INSTITUTION OF THE HAL-
LOWS, AND, SECONDLY, THE VARIATIONS OF THE CuP
LEGEND. — The Holy Vessel in the legends of Joseph of
Arimath<za — The high symbolism of the Cup — Sources of
information concerning the Sacred Vessel — Certain apocryphal
Gospels and certain chronicles of Britain — Variations of the
Conte del Graal — The Cup in the metrical romance of ~De
Eorron — Its Rucharistic character — Philology of the term
GRAAL — The Cup in the Lesser Holy Graal — In the
Early Prose Merlin — In the Didot Perceval — The Cup in
the Hook of the Holy Graal — The Chalice and the Paschal
Dish — References in the later prose Merlins — The Graal in
the Longer Prose Perceval — Certain visions of the Holy Vessel
in the great prose Lancelot — The Graal in the Quest of
75
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Galahad — The Hallow In the German cycle — Possible
hypotheses regarding the Most Precious Vessel — The conclusion
of this matter. IV. THE GRAAL VESSEL CONSIDERED AS
A BOWL OF PLENTY. — Developments of this tradition in the
Greater Chronicles — In the poem of Robert de Borron — Of
spiritual refreshment — Material presentation in the Book of
the Holy Graal — Two aspects of magical feeding in the
German cycle. V. THE LESSER HALLOWS OF THE
LEGEND. — The Summary of these matters — The Lance —
The Broken Sword— The Dish or Salver. VI. THE
CASTLE OF THE HOLY GRAAL. — The place of the Holy
Vessel — The House of the Rich King Fisherman — The
Castle in the Valley— The Castle of Eden— The Palace
of Dead Men. VII. THE KEEPERS OF THE HALLOWS.
— Variations of tradition in respect of the Graal and its
Guardians — How the life of Brons was prolonged through-
out the centuries — The Keepers in the Greater Chronicles.
VIII. THE PAGEANTS IN THE QUESTS. — Order of
the Ceremonial Procession in the Conte del Graal — The
Pageant in the Romance of Lancelot — In the duest of
Galahad — In the Longer Prose Perceval — In the German
cycle. IX. THE ENCHANTMENTS OF BRITAIN, THE
TIMES CALLED ADVENTUROUS AND THE WOUNDING
OF THE KING. — The Cloud upon the Sanctuary — The sus-
pension of Nature — Times of peril and distress — Of sin
entering the Sanctuary — Of help coming from without — The
Dolorous Stroke. X. THE SUPPRESSED WORD AND
THE MYSTIC QUESTION. — One distinction between Perceval
and Galahad — Mischances of the Word in its suppression —
The Word in partial manifestation — Of the causes of silence
— Of the plenary demand. XL THE HEALING OF THE
KING. — How the burden was lifted from old age — Of
76
The Argument
anodyne for wounding in battle — Concerning the body of the
healer — Of absolution from sin. XII. THE REMOVAL OF
THE HALLOWS. — How, according to one text, they remain
in seclusion — How, in another, there was no recession — How
the dead were set free — How the Hallows were not seen
so openly — How they were taken to heaven — Conclusion as
to the Hallows — Their hidden period.
77
BOOK II
MTSTERIES OF THE HOLT GRAAL IN
MANIFESTATION AND REMOVAL
I
A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF CERTAIN ROOT-
SECRETS INCLUDED IN THE WHOLE SUBJECT
IT is a very curious heaven which stands around the
infancy of romance-literature, and more than one warrant
is required to constitute a full title for the interpretation
of those strange signs and portents which are seen in
some of its zones. The academies of official learning
are consecrated places, and those who have graduated in
other schools, and know well that they hold, within
their own province, the higher authority, must be the
first to recognise and respect the unsleeping vigilance
and patience of students who are their colleagues and
brothers in a different sphere. In the study of archaic
literature, the external history of the texts and the
criticisms thereto belonging are in the hands of a recog-
nised college, and its authority is usually final ; but the
inward spirit of the literature is sometimes an essence
which escapes the academical processes. At the same
time, any school of criticism which should decide that
some books of the Holy Graal do not put forward
extraordinary claims of the evasive kind, and do not so
far contain the suggestion of an inward purpose, must
be held to have failed even within its own province.
Having indicated after what manner the literature
79
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
with which we are dealing falls readily into several
groups of a distinct kind for the purpose of particular
classification, we are now called to regard it a little
differently, though without prejudice to the schedule-
in-chief of my proper choice. The distinction between
quest-versions and versions of early history is known
to students, and though it is not absolutely definite in
itself, so far as the intention of criticism is concerned
solely, it is important from another point of view. The
reason is that both classes have their particular mystery,
which is not without its antecedents in distinct schools of
symbolism. The keynotes of the historical series — to
make use of the expression in a sense which is not
usually or so concisely attached to it — -are those which
have been considered as the implicits-in-chief of the
literature. They are two in number, and they are em-
bodied in two palmary historical texts, from which they
were carried forward through intermediate documents
which answer, broadly speaking, to the same description,
and thence through certain quest-versions by which the
literature is taken to its term. I am speaking, however,
only of those cycles which have been classified in the
previous section as the Lesser and Greater Chronicles of
the Holy Graal ; but it should be understood that the
same or analogous early histories are presupposed by the
later sequels to the poem of Chretien de Troyes. On the
other hand, the German cycle, as represented by Wolfram
von Eschenbach and the author of the later Titurel, has
an early history which differs from all existing French
sources, though the Quest of Parsifal is in close corre-
spondence with the Perceval quests current in northern
France.
We have seen, concerning the keynotes of the early
histories, that they are : —
A. The suppression or concealment of a potent
sacramental formula, in the absence of which the office of
the Christian ministry is not indeed abrogated but is
foreshortened or has become substituted, so that there
80
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
seems to be something of a vital character wanting to all
the sanctuaries. Whatever therefore the elements which
entered into the composition of the Graal conception,
several versions of the legend unite in relating it to
the mystery and power of certain high consecrations or
of certain unmanifested and withheld forms of speech.
Those who can acquire and retain the words may exercise
at will a strange power and mastery over all about them,
and will possess great credit in the sight of God. They
need never fear the deprivation of their proper rights,
sufferings from evil judgments, or conquest in battle, so
long as their cause is just. It is, however, as I have
intimated, either (i) impossible to communicate these
words in writing, or (2) they are recorded in one place
only ; that is to say, in the secret archives, or great book
of the Graal. They are too precious and holy for com-
mon utterance, and, moreover, they are the secret of the
Graal itself, in which a strange power of speech also
resides. Joseph was himself under singular direction in
accordance with the preconceived order of the Mystery,
for the fulfilment of its concealed term.
B. The removal, cessation, or assumption of a certain
school of ordination, which held from heaven the highest
warrants, which was perpetuated from generation to
generation in one line of descent, which had the custody
of the sacred mysteries, which, in fine, ordained no one ;
and the substitution, both concurrently and thereafter, of
some other form of succession — venerable enough in its
way, and the next surviving best after the abrogation
of the first, but not the highest actuality of all, not the
evidence of things unseen made spiritually and materially
manifest as the term of faith. To this extent did the
powers of the Secret Sanctuary differ by the hypothesis
concerning it from the powers of the Holy Church mani-
fested in the world. Yet the Church manifest was also
the Church Holy.
In the prologue or preamble to the Book of the Holy
Graal, the hermit who receives the revelations and the
81 F
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
custody of the mysterious Book of the Legend testifies
that the greatest secret of the world has been confided to
him, and the communication took place amidst inexpres-
sible experiences in that third heaven to which St. Paul
was translated. The description of his ecstasy is written
in fervent language, but in place of an indicible formula
there is a great mystery attributed to the entire text
of that cryptic record which, although it is said to be
translated, yet remains unknown. The form wherein
we have it is a concession to human disqualification and
even to the frailty of external Nature. We possess only
a substitute. On the other hand, the keynotes of the
French quests are also of two kinds, by which — if it were
possible otherwise — they might be divided into two cycles.
That of the several Percevals is the suppression of a
certain word, question, or formula, which suppression, on
the surface side of things, causes dire misery and post-
pones the advancement of the elect hero, but in the end
it makes for his further recognition and ensures his more
perfect calling, so that he is crowned in fine as he might
not have been crowned at first. If at his initial oppor-
tunity he had asked in the Graal Castle that simple
question which covers the whole adventure with so deep
a cloud of mystery, he would not have been perfected in
suffering, regret and exile ; some of the quests would
have terminated almost at their inception, and one in its
present form could not have existed at all.
The withheld word of the Perceval quests takes, as I
have indicated, the form of a simple question — a ques-
tion, that is to say, which should have been asked but
was not ; as such it is, so to speak, the reverse side or
antithesis of the old classical legend of the sphinx. The
sphinx asked questions and devoured those who did not
reply or whose answers blundered. Perceval kept silence
when he should have urged his inquiries, sometimes
through false modesty, sometimes because he had been
cautioned against idle curiosity; but in both cases, by
the working of some apparently blind destiny, the
82
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
omission carried with it the long series of its disastrous
consequences. There came, however, a time of joy and
deliverance, and it followed a belated utterance of the
word ; thereby great enchantments were determined, great
wrongs were redressed, and the wounds and sufferings
endured through many years were healed and annulled.
It follows that there is a twofold mystery of words con-
nected by certain texts with the Quest of Perceval. Its
higher sense is that of the sacramental formula, and this
was interned with Perceval according to the Lesser
Chronicles. But the word alternative — that which could
be reserved or uttered — had performed in the meantime,
and was still fulfilling, a certain office of amelioration, so
that it is not by a merely vain observance that, in a sense,
it is replaced by the quests for that unknown formula
which was reserved as the last mystery of the Hidden
Sanctuary. In contradistinction to this, there is one quest
— and it is to be noted that it is one only — which depends
entirely from the second alternative of the historical
implicits. This is the Galahad Quest, and the keynote
hereof is separate from all mysteries of asking, all joy
of answer, as if these were of the Lesser Enigmas, and
it is uplifted into a great world of holiness, where no
longer is there any shadow of similitude to secret claims
— doctrinal or ecclesiastical ; but the heroism of human
life is received into the Divine Rapture, so that the last
formulary of the search after and finding of the Holy
Graal is in all truth that which is expressed by the admir-
able doctor Ruysbroeck — in vastissimum divinitatis pelagus
navigare. Of such is the Graal legend, and those who
are acquainted with it in the most elect of its early forms
will agree not only that many portions of it are singularly
winning, but that it is indeed
" A part
Of the hunger and thirst of the heart."
It is also on the external side a very melancholy legend ;
it is the passing of a great procession and a great sacra-
83
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
ment, which, owing to the imputed stress and terror of
the time, is destined never to return in the same form ;
it is a portion of the loss of humanity on one side of its
manhood ; and it is no matter for surprise that in these
late days, which are so full of the hunger and the thirst,
several persons have attempted to read into it the parti-
cular significance which appeals to them. This has been
anything in some cases but that which could have been
intended consciously by any maker of chronicles, and the
question of Perceval abides therefore amongst us, but now
in the reverse form, seeing that it is asked, and this often,
yet it remains to this day unanswered, save in those Holy
Places, beyond the external voices, of which this world,
as such, knows not anything. To the glory of God and
to those Holy Places, within the Great Church of the
Mysteries, I dedicate this research as a sign without of
the things signified within.
II
THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOAS, AND IN
THE FIRST PLACE A GENERAL INTRODUC-
TION CONCERNING THEM
Having thus indicated after what manner the Graal
legend and its literature is tinged with mystery and
symbolism a parte ante et a pane post, the next matter
of our inquiry is concerned with the Institution of
the Hallows. In all its forms indifferently, the Legend
of the Holy Graal depends upon powers and offices
ascribed to certain sacred objects. Those texts which
it has become customary to term the Early Histories,
equally with those which present the various versions
of the Quest, revolve about these Hallows, showing how
they were instituted, how they came into Britain, in
whose hands they were preserved at first, to whom
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
they were transmitted successively, why and by whom
they were sought, and what, in fine, became of them.
Among the general characteristics of the French
cycle we shall find that there is the passage of these
Hallows from East to West. They are in hereditary
keeping, and in the end, according to certain ver-
sions, they are again taken East. There are, however,
numerous phases of the legend, important variations in
the Hallows, while claims which are manifest in certain
texts are in others non-existent. The cycle in Germany
took over the legend of the Swan Knight and imported
the Templar interest expressly ; on the other hand, the
introduction of certain highly ascetic elements is thought
to be characterised by the coming of Galahad into the
Graal Quest. The peculiar ecclesiastical claims which
are the subsurface warrant of the cycle written in
Northern French were never put forward ostensibly, and
in the Galahad legend there remains only the shadow
of those earlier designs which might be constructed as
in dissonance with the Latin rite.
The Quest of the Holy Graal and of the other
Hallows which were from time to time connected there-
with is followed by many knightly heroes, most of whom
are unsuccessful ; the preliminary conditions of attain-
ment are purity and sanctity, but there is nothing to
show that these were sufficient in themselves, and as
there were other qualifications, so in some signal instances
a partial success was not impossible in the absence, or at
least comparatively, of those warrants which in given
cases were claimed as essential. Once more, therefore,
the cycle of Northern France may be regarded as falling
into four divisions : —
(a] The Institution of the Hallows, and more especially
that which concerns the origin of the Sacred Vessel.
(£) The circumstances under which the Hallows were
carried into Britain, or alternatively were found
therein, and the later circumstances of their partial
manifestation.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
(c] The details of the search for the Hallows, and
other things within and without which led to
their removal or recession.
(d} The occasion of their final departure.
The texts, therefore, purport to provide the complete
History of the Graal, including whence it came, where
it abode for a while, and whither it has gone. This is
not to say that there are express books treating of each
section only. The metrical romance of De Borron does,
however, stand simply for the first part, and the same ap-
plies to its prose rendering in the Lesser Holy Graal. The
second part is found in the Book of the Holy Graal, and
the third in the Didot Perceval, the Conte del Graal, the
Parsifal of Wolfram, the Longer Prose Perceval and the
Great Quest of Galahad. The German Perceval excepted,
all these stories of research give an account of the with-
drawal— some at considerable length, and some briefly.
Again, the later romances may be divided into two
sections : (a) those which speak of an enchantment fallen
on Britain, and (£) those which are concerned with the
termination of certain adventurous times. If the litera-
ture follows any set purpose, a definable importance must
be attributed to the meaning of that enchantment and
those adventures. In this manner, the chief questions
may be summarised alternatively as follows : —
(#) The sacramental claim and its connections, so far
as these appear in the Quests.
(£) The qualifications for the Quest.
(<:) The Hereditary Keepers of the Graal.
(^) The King's Wounding and the King's Healing.
(e) The enchantments of Britain in connection with
the Wounded Keeper.
(/) The removal of the Graal and the close of those
times which the texts term adventurous, since
when there has been silence on earth in respect
of the Holy Graal.
The sacramental claim is introduced, among other
documents, in (a) the De Borron poem ; (£) the Lesser
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
Holy Graal; while its shadow is projected as a secret
which cannot be told in (c) the proem to the Conte del
Graal. It seems to be found by a vague and remote
inference in the Longer Prose Perceval, and it may be
gathered by brief allusions in the early prose Merlin.
In the Great Quest it has been expunged, while it is
outside the tradition as represented by Wolfram. The
Quest qualifications are vague in Chretien and exceed
reason. They are perhaps what might be termed ethical
—but in the high degree — in Wolfram, who presents the
marriage of Perceval. The so-called ascetic element
appears fully in the 'Book of the Holy Graal, in the Longer
Prose Perceval, and in the Quest of Galahad. The
King's Wounding is accounted for differently in every
romance ; the withdrawal of the Graal is also told
differently ; sometimes it passes simply into deeper con-
cealment ; sometimes it seems taken away utterly ; in one
version there is another keeper appointed, but of the realm
apart from the Hallows ; it is carried to the far East in
another ; in two texts it remains where it was.
If there is a secret intention permeating the bulk of
the literature, again it must partly reside in those epochs
into which the literature falls ; their consideration should
manifest it and should enable us to deal, at the close of
the whole research, with the final problem, being that
which is signified by the departure of the Sacred Vessel.
Each of the Hallows has its implied enigma, besides
that which appears openly in its express nature, and as
we know that the mysteries of God are mysteries of
patience and compassion, we shall be prepared to find in
their reflections through the Graal Legend that even
some offices of judgment are formularies of concealed
mercy. They are therefore both declared and un-
declared— that is to say, understood ; and as there are
certain Hallows which only appear occasionally, so there
are suggestions and inferences concerning others which do
not appear at all. That which was always in evidence is
that to which the distinctive name of Graal is applied in
8?
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
every text, but enough has been said concerning it till we
come to its exhaustive consideration in the next section.
The second and third Hallows are the Lance and the
Sword. The Lance is that which was used by the Roman
soldier Longinus to pierce the side of Christ at the Cruci-
fixion, or it is this at least according to the more general
tradition. Of the Sword there are various stories, and it
is this which in some cases serves to inflict the wound
from which the Enchantments of Britain follow. It is
(a) that which served to behead St. John the Baptist, in
which connection we can understand its position as a
sacred object ; (<£) that of the King and Prophet David,
committed by Solomon to a wonderful ship, which went
voyaging, voyaging throughout the ages till it should be
seen by Galahad, the last scion of the royal house of
Israel ; or (c] it is simply an instrument preserved as
a token belonging to a legend of vengeance, in which
relation it was brought over from folk-lore and is nothing
to the purpose of the Graal.
The Dish, which is the fourth and final object in-
cluded among the authorised Hallows, is more difficult
to specify, because its almost invariable appearance in
the pageant of the high processions is accompanied by
no intelligible explanation respecting it ; and although
it has also its antecedents in folk-lore, its mystic ex-
planation, if any, must be sought very far away. Like
the rest of the Hallows, it is described with many
variations in the different books. It may be a salver
of gold and precious stones, set on a silver cloth and
carried by two maidens ; it may be a goodly plate of
silver, or a little golden vessel, and this simply, except
in the Longer Prose Perceval, which as it multiplies the
Hallows so it divides their ministry ; but here, as else-
where, the Dish does not embody apparently the feeding
properties which are one aspect of the mystery.
In summary therefore : subject to characteristic varia-
tions which are particular to each text, it will be found
that the several romances follow or forecast one general
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
process, exhibiting a general secret intention, manifested
though not declared, and it is for this intention that
my study has to account.
Ill
THE INSTITUTION OF THE HALLOAS, AND,
SECONDLT, THE VARIATIONS OF THE CUP
LEGEND
We have seen that the secret of the Graal, signifying
the super-substantial nourishment of man, was communi-
cated by Christ to His chosen disciple Joseph of Arima-
thaea, who, by preserving the body of his Master after
the Crucifixion, became an instrument of the Resurrec-
tion. He laid it in the sepulchre, and thus sowed the
seed whence issued the arch-natural body. On Ascension
Day this was removed from the world, but there re-
mained the Holy Vessel, into which the blood of the
natural body had been received by Joseph. Strangely
endued with the virtues of the risen Christ and the power
of the Holy Ghost, it sustained him spiritually, and by
a kind of reflection physically, during forty years of
imprisonment, through which period he was in that con-
dition of ecstasy which is said by the Christian masters
of contemplation to last for half-an-hour — being that time
when there is silence in heaven. We find accordingly
that Joseph had no sense of duration in respect of the
years ; he was already in that mystery of God into which
the ages pass. After his release the Holy Vessel became
a sign of saving grace, instruction and all wonder to that
great company which he was elected to take westward.
He committed it in fine to another keeper, by whom
it was brought into Britain, and there, or otherwhere,
certain lesser Hallows were added to the Hallow-m-
chief, and were held with it in the places of concealment.
Those which are met with most frequently, as we have
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
seen, are four in number, but the mystery is really one,
since it is all assumed into that vessel which is known for
the most part as the Cup of legend. It is understood that
for us at least this Cup is a symbol, seeing that the most
precious of all vessels are not made with hands. It is in
such sense that the true soul of philosophy is a cup which
contains the universe. We shall understand also the
ministry of material sustenance, frequently attributed to
the Holy Graal, after another manner than that which
can be presumed within the offices of folk-lore. It
is in this sense that the old fable concerning the
Bowl of Plenty, when incorporated by the Graal Mystery,
may prove to have a profound meaning. Some things
are taken externally ; some are received within ; but
the food of the body has analogies with that of the
soul. So much may be said at the moment concerning
certain aspects which encompass the literature of the
Graal, as the hills stand round Jerusalem.
The four Hallows are therefore the Cup, the Lance,
the Sword and the Dish, Paten or Patella — these four,
and the greatest of these is the Cup. As regards this
Hallow-in-chief, of two things one : either the Graal
Vessel contained the most sacred of all relics in Christen-
dom, or it contained the Secret Mystery of the Eucharist.
Now, the first question which arises is whether the general
description which obtains concerning it — as I was almost
about to say, in the popular mind — reposes on the
authority of the texts. Here also will be found our
first difficulty. I may not be pardoned such flippancy,
but the Psalmist said : Calix meus quam inebrians est, and
this has rather a bearing on the Graal chalice ; for the
variety of the accounts concerning it may produce in the
mind a sense of having visited some inn of strange
description where those who come to ask questions are
served with strong measures, and full at that.
There are three available sources of information con-
cerning the Sacred Vessel, including those which are
purely of the Eucharistic office, (i) The apocryphal
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
legends concerning Joseph of Arimathaea which are dis-
tinct from those that have been incorporated with the
romances of chivalry and with the histories leading up
to these. (2) The romances themselves and their pro-
legomena, which are the chief bases of our knowledge,
but on the understanding that there is no criterion for
the distinction between that which is traditional and
that which is pure invention. (3) Some archaeological
aspects of sacramental practice.
The apocryphal legends which connect Joseph with
the cultus of the Precious Blood are late, and they
lie under the suspicion of having been devised in the
interests of Glastonbury, or through Glastonbury of
ecclesiastical pretensions on the part of the British Church
at or about the period of Henry II. Above these as
a substratum of solid fact — I refer to the fact of the
inventions — there has been of late years superposed
an alleged dream of a pan-Britannic Church, which
belongs, however, more particularly to the romance of
history. The chivalrous romances themselves have so
overlaid the Graal object with decorations and wonder-
elements that the object itself has been obscured and
its nature can, in some cases, be extricated scarcely.
Eucharistic archaeology remains as a source of informa-
tion on which it is possible to rely implicitly, but while
this can satisfy us as to the variations in the form and
matter of the Sacred Vessel used in the Sacrifice of the
Mass, it does not offer us, except indirectly, much or
perhaps any assistance to determine the relic of legend.
The Evangelium Nicodemi, Acta [vet Gestd\ Pilatiy
and some other oriental apocryphal documents are the
authorities for the imprisonment of Joseph by the Jews
because he had laid the body of Christ in the sepulchre.
William of Malmesbury, John of Glastonbury and
similar makers of chronicles are responsible for referring
the first evangelisation of Britain to Joseph of Arimathaea.
From these, however, we must except Geoffrey of
Monmouth, and William of Malmesbury has nothing
9'
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
to tell us of the Graal, though he has the story of two
phials containing the Precious Blood. The reference to
relics of any kind is also late in the chronicles. An English
metrical life of Joseph, belonging to the first years of the
sixteenth century, but drawing from previous sources,
shows how the precious blood was collected by that saint
and received into two cruets, which we find figuring at
a later period in the arms of Glastonbury Abbey. One
of these sources, though perhaps at a far distance, may
have been the lost book attributed to Melkin or Mewyn,
which gives an account of these cruets. The tradition
supposes (i) that they were buried at Glastonbury, (2)
that they will be discovered concurrently with the
coffin of Joseph, and (3) that thereafter there will be
no more drought in Britain. John of Glastonbury is one
of the authorities for the existence of a book of Melkin
— sometimes identified with the Chronicle of Nennius.
The more immediate antecedent of the metrical story
is, however, the Nova Legenda Anglic of Capgrave, and
it represents Joseph as living with twelve hermits at
Glastonbury, where he also died and was buried. The
Oxford Vernon MS., written in verse about 1350, shows
that there was a sacred vessel containing blood. The
Chronicle of Helinandus describes the Graal as a wide
and shallow vessel, wherein meats in their juice are
served to wealthy persons. The Historia Aurea, written
by John of Tynemouth, connects Joseph with the Holy
Vessel, which it describes as that large dish or platter in
which the Lord supped with His disciples, with which
concurs one entire cycle of the legend. It may be
added, for what it is worth, that the Armorican Gauls
seem to have had a sacred vessel used in certain rites
from a very early period. An object of this kind is
thought to be depicted on Armorican coins, being semi-
circular in shape, held by means of thongs and devoid of
stem or base. Under Roman domination the vessel was
figured with a pedestal.
We come now to the putative historical romances and
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
the poems and tales of chivalry which contain the de-
veloped legend of the Graal. The Conte del Graal,
which is the first text for our consideration, has many
decorative descriptions of the Sacred Vessel, but they pre-
sent certain difficulties, as will be exhibited by their simple
recitation in summary, (i) It was covered with the most
precious stones that are found in the world, and it gave
forth so great a light that the candles at the table were
eclipsed, even as are the stars of heaven in the glory of
the sun and moon (Chretien de Troyes). (2) It passed
to and fro quickly amidst the lights, but no hand
appeared to hold it (Gautier de Doulens, or, as he is
now termed, Wauchier de Denain). (3) It was borne
uplifted by a beautiful maiden, who was discounselled
and weeping (Montpellier MS.). (4) It was carried to
and fro before the table by a maiden more beautiful
than flowers in April (second account of Gautier, with
which compare the similar recital of Gerbert). (5) It
was carried amidst a great light by an angel, to heal
Perceval (Manessier). (6) It was carried in the pageant
by a maiden through the castle chamber (ibid.). (7) It
was carried openly at the coronation of Perceval, also
by a maiden (ibid.). (8) It was, in fine, ravished with
the soul of Perceval, and has never since been seen
so openly : —
" Ne ja mais nus hommes qui soit nes
Nel vera si apiertement."
What follows from these citations will have occurred to
the reader — that in all these several sections of the Conte
del Graal there is no intelligible description of the sacred
object; that the writers knew of it at a far distance
only; that some of their references seem to indicate
a brilliant lamp rather than a chalice ; and, when they
allocated it to Christian symbolism, that they may have
wavered in their meaning between the idea of the
Paschal Dish and the Cup in which Christ consecrated the
wine of the first Eucharist ; but we cannot tell. I should
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
add that the prologue, which is certainly the work of a
later or at least of another hand, and embodies some
curious material, mentions, but very briefly, the pageant of
the Graal procession, saying that the Vessel appears at the
Castle without sergeant or seneschal, but again there is no
description of the Vessel. In conclusion of this account,
the alternative ending of Gerbert retells with variations
part of the story of Joseph, and although there is once
again no intimation as to the form of the Graal, an
account of the service performed at an altar over " the
holy, spiritual thing " — the Vessel more beautiful than
eye of man has seen — is there recounted, while it leaves
no doubt in the mind that this service was a Mass of the
Graal. It is the only suggestion of the kind which is
afforded by the vast poem, though the origin and early
history of the sacred object is in accordance with the
received tradition.
The fuller memorials of this tradition are embodied,
as we have seen, in two cycles of literature, but the text
which is first in time and chief in importance is the
metrical Romance of the Graal, or Joseph of Arimathtea, by
Robert de Borron. A French and a German critic have
said that this is the earliest text of the Graal literature
proper, and an English writer has concluded, on the con-
trary, that it is not : mats que nfimporte ? I will not even
ask for the benefit of the doubt, so far as enumeration
is concerned. The metrical Joseph says that the Graal
was a passing fair vessel, wherein did Christ make His
sacrament. This is vague admittedly, and assuming a
certain confusion in the mind of the writer, it might
have been that Dish mentioned by John of Tynemouth
in which the Paschal Lamb was eaten by Christ and His
disciples. In place of the words mout gent, which are
given by the original French editor of the only text,
Paulin Paris, following I know not what authority, or
imagining a variant reading, substituted the words mout
grant, which might well apply to the Paschal Dish. But
Robert de Borron certifies to his own meaning when he
94
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
recites an utterance of Christ in His discourse to Joseph,
for it is there said that the vessel which has served as
the reliquary shall be called henceforth a chalice : —
" Cist vaisseau ou men sane meis,
Quant de men cors le requeilJis,
Calices apelez sera."
It is impossible to read the later verses in which the Euchar-
istic chalice is compared with the sepulchre of Christ,
the mass corporal with the grave-clothes, and the paten
with the stone at the mouth of the tomb, without con-
cluding that by the Graal was intended the first Euchar-
istic chalice, and the presence of this symbolism in the
mind of Robert de Borron suggests a symbolical inten-
tion on his part in the whole legend which he presented.
If it is said that his idea of a chalice does not correspond
to a vessel the content of which is sacramental wine,
it should be remembered that the ciborium which con-
tains consecrated Hosts is still at this day replaced on
occasion by a chalice of the ordinary form.
The idea of the devotional poet, supposing it to have
been as purely mystical as he was himself deeply re-
ligious, might have embodied an attempt to shadow
forth in the perpetuation of the most precious of all
reliquaries the sacramental mystery of the Real Presence.
It seems certain, in any case, that when Robert de Borron
speaks of the Graal as that vessel in which Christ made
his sacrament, this must not be understood as referring
to the Paschal Dish, though one probable derivation of
the word Graal would support the latter view. In the
dialect of Languedoc, Grazal signified a large vessel,
usually of clay ; in the dialect of Provence, Grasal was
a bowl or platter ; in Anglo-Norman, or its connections,
Graal was a dish made of some costly material for the
purpose of great feasts, which, as we have seen, is the
description of Helinandus. With all this some of the
later romancers were dissatisfied, and, following Robert
de Borron, they exalted the vessel into a chalice, so
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that they might bring it into line with the Eucharistic
side of the legend, with which side a paschal dish —
whether that of Christ or another — offered little analogy.
The material of such a chalice would have been probably
glass. It follows from Tertullian that in Rome at the
beginning of the third century they used glass chalices ;
so did the Bishop of Toulouse at the end of the fourth
century; and about A.D. 550 the same custom prevailed,
as appears by the life of Cesarius, Bishop of Aries. A
council of Rheims in the days of Charlemagne is said to
have forbidden glass chalices because they were brittle.
The Lesser Holy Graal does not depart from the
rendering which I have here given in respect of the
metrical romance, but it seems to make the assurance of
the poet more certain by elucidating further the applica-
tion of the secret words to the consecration and adminis-
tering of the Eucharist. Where the poem says that
there is a great book in which has been written the
great secret called the Graal, the Lesser Holy Graal says :
This is the secret uttered at the great sacrament performed
over the Graal — that is to say, over the chalice. The
vessel is otherwise described as the one in which Christ
sacrificed, as if He actually celebrated the first Mass, and
from the Eucharistic standpoint this seems much stronger
than the corresponding feisoil son sacrement\ which are the
words of Robert de Borron. The repetition of the ex-
perience of the sacred table which is enjoined by Joseph
in both texts is in both termed the service of the Graal,
but in the prose version alone is it adjudged to the hour
of tierce, as if the Mass of the day were celebrated, and
as if certain persons, evidently in a state of grace, were
sustained in the body by the sacramental nutriment of
the soul. The Early Merlin and the Didot Perceval
neither reduce nor increase the evidence ; but it may be
hazarded, for what it is worth, that the original disclosure
of the secret words may have had some office in pre-
serving the content of the great relic.
In the Early Merlin there is no allusion to the office
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
of secret words, and no Graal Hallows are mentioned
excepting the Cup, as it is obvious that we cannot
include the sword of Merlin, through which Arthur was
chosen to be king. It does not appear that this weapon
had any antecedent history. In the Didot Perceval the
rumour and the wonder of the Graal moves pageant-
like through all the pages, but it is more shorn of
descriptive allusions than anything that has preceded it
in the quests. When the predestined Knight visits the
castle, tower, or hold in which the Hallow has been
preserved through so many centuries, he sees it plainly
enough at the supper-table, along which it passes, carried
with no ostentation by a mere page of the chamber ; but
he is said only to hold a vessel wherein the blood of our
Saviour reposed. This is at the first visit, and at the
second, when Perceval is initiated into the whole mystery
and becomes the Lord of the Graal, the description is
repeated merely, as if it were a counsel of perfection to
maintain and even to increase in the third text of
the trilogy whatsoever could be called vague and dubious
in the first.
The Book of the Holy Graal, even when it reproduces with
several variations the prose version of Robert de Borron's
poem, gives, in some of its codices, an explanation of the
Sacred Vessel which is the antithesis of his own. It is
described as that Dish in which the Son of God partook
of the Last Supper before He gave to the disciples His
own flesh and blood. It was, therefore, the Paschal
Dish. Certain manuscripts, however, differ so widely
that it is difficult to determine the original state of the
text. Another codex follows the account of the Lesser
Holy Graal. According to a third codex, it was the
content and not the Vessel which was called the Holy
Graal ; but, speaking generally, most versions concur in
describing it as the Holy Dish. The connection with
the Eucharist is, however, sufficiently close, for he who
is elected to say the first Mass and to consecrate the un-
spotted elements is he also to whom by Divine instruction
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Joseph surrenders the vessel. But the Blessed Reliquary
would seem to have been rather the outward witness to
the presence within those elements. For example, in the
first unveiled vision of the Holy Graal which is granted
to any one outside Joseph himself, we hear of an altar,
on one side of which were the nails used for the Cruci-
fixion, together with the hallowed Lance ; on the other
side was the Dish ; and in the centre there was an ex-
ceeding rich vessel of gold in the semblance of a goblet
— obviously the chalice of consecration : it had a lid after
the manner of a ciborium. More astonishing still, the
cup of the Eucharist is placed within the Graal during a
ceremony which corresponds to the Mass. In a romance
so overcharged with decoration and so lavish in episodes
of wonder, we should expect, and shall not be disap-
pointed, that many pageants and ornaments would collect
about the Holy Vessel, and that it should work many
marvels. The Sacrament consecrated within it reveals
the mysteries of Christ openly to chosen eyes, but
thereon can no man look until he is cleansed from sin.
It gives also on occasion the vision of an Eternal Eucharist
and a great company sitting at the high table in the
Paradise which is above. So far as concerns the authority
of the text itself, it would appear that the Mass of the
Graal is not like that of the Church without — an office
which recurs daily ; it is rather an arch-natural sacrifice,
at which the incarnate Christ figures as the sensible
oblation and subsequently as the Melchisedech of the
rite, communicating Himself to the witnesses, while a
thousand voices about him give thanks to God amidst
a great beating of birds' wings, and
" Young men whom no one knew went in and out
With a far look in their eternal eyes."
The texts of the later Merlin have several refer-
ences to the Graal, and it is the chief purpose which
moves through the dual romance, leading up, as it does
obviously, to a Quest of the Sacred Vessel ; but what is
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
understood thereby must be gathered chiefly from its
reflections of the Joseph legend. We shall see that in
certain codices the account differs from that of Robert
de Borron. The Vulgate Merlin has one very remark-
able passage, which tells how the tidings of the Holy
Graal spread through the realm of King Arthur, and
how the Graal was that Vessel in which Joseph of Arima-
thasa received the blood from the side of Jesus Christ
when He hung upon the Cross. It represents, therefore,
a tradition which is familiar enough not only in the
literature of romance, but in that of religious legend,
though it is the antithesis of the account given in the
Lesser Chronicles, wherein we are told that the blood
was drawn into the Vessel after Joseph and Nicodemus
had taken down the Body of the Lord. Secondly, the
Graal was that Holy Vessel which came from Heaven
above into the city of Sarras. We have here a reflection
only, and that at a far distance, of the 'Book of the Holy
Graal in the form which is now extant. Thirdly, and
to us most important, the Graal was that Vessel in which
Christ first sacrificed His Blessed Body and His Flesh by
the mediation of His bishop, the Second Joseph, whom
He ordained with His own hands. According to the
Huth Merlin the Graal was that Vessel in which Jesus
and His Apostles ate the Last Supper. It was again,
therefore, the Paschal Dish.
The Longer Prose Perceval has many descriptions of
the vessel, all of which are designed to connect it with the
chalice, but they are highly mystical in their nature. As
one of the most express attempts to relate the Graal
with the Eucharist, it must be regarded as important
for the subject of the Hallow-in-chief. This romance
and the great Quest of Galahad are both texts of tran-
substantiation, and they must rank also among the latest
documents of the literature. The Lesser Chronicles,
even in the prose version of De Borron's poem, offer no
suggestion concerning this doctrine, the Graal Vessel
being simply a Hallow containing a precious relic. About
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the period of the Quest and the High History, the tide
of ecclesiastical feeling, which long previously had set
towards the definition of the dogma, must have permeated
the mind of the laity, prepared as it also was by the
desire of things sensible and tangible in matters of re-
ligion. It was, this notwithstanding, still long to the
establishment of the high, symbolical festival of Corpus
Christi, which provided an external epilogue to the closed
canon of the Graal, as if by a final substitution that
which was taken away, or at least ex hypothesi, was to be in
perpetuity memorialised about the precincts of the gate
by the wardens thereof. In connection with transub-
stantiation, it may be remarked that the religious office
of Knighthood was above all things to hear mass, and,
next, to confess sins. There are few records in the
Graal romances that the chivalry of Logres communi-
cated, except in the Quest of Galahad, and then only in
the case of the elect knights. All high festivals were
observed, all penances fulfilled ; but to participate in the
Eucharistic mystery seemed apart from the life of the
world and withdrawn into the sphere of sanctity. How-
ever this may be, the Longer Prose Perceval has two
cryptic descriptions of the Graal Vessel, which, on account
of their complexity, but for the moment only, I must
present as they stand actually in the story, (i) It is
said concerning Gawain, when he looked at the Graal in
his wonder, that it seemed to him a chalice was therein,
" albeit there was none at this time." It was, therefore,
an ark or a tabernacle which was designed to contain a
cup, but when the latter was removed it still held the
shadow or semblance thereof. (2) In the course of the
same episode a change was performed in the aspect of the
external object, and it appeared to be " all in flesh,"
meaning that it was transformed into a vision of Christ
crucified. Towards the close of the story, when a certain
Queen Jandree relates her visions to Perceval, she sees,
in one of these, an image of the crucifixion from which
people collect the Blood into a most Holy Vessel, elevated
100
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
for that object by one of them. There are no names
mentioned, but for purposes of simplicity we may assume
that they were Joseph and Nicodemus. In the castle of
King Fisherman the office of the Cup was to receive the
Blood which fell from the point of the Sacred Lance.
The priest who officiated at the Graal service is said to
begin his sacrament, with which expression we may com-
pare the words feisoit son sacrement, which are those of
Robert de Borron. There is indubitably reference to
the Eucharist in both cases, and perhaps the Graal Mass
Book was a traditional version of the Mass, supposed,
ex hypothesi^ to follow the Last Supper. Speaking gener-
ally, the historical account of the Cup follows the Book
of the Holy Graal rather than De Borron's poem, for the
blood which flowed from the wounds of Christ when He
was set upon the Cross is said to have been received into
the Sacred Vessel. There is no ministry in respect of
material sustenance attributed to the Graal in this
spiritual romance.
It is, therefore, in one sense the antithesis of the
Quest of Galahad, which dwells with equal fulness on
the food-giving properties of the Vessel and on its
connection with the mystery of such a mass and such an
office of the Eucharist as never before or after was said in
the wide world, apart from this sacred object. When
the Holy Graal enters the court of King Arthur and into
the banqueting-hall it is clothed in white samite, but
neither the Vessel nor the bearer are visible to human
eyes. On a later occasion it manifests as a Holy Vessel
on a table of silver in an old chapel. Elsewhere it is
observed that the Flesh and Blood of God are present in
the Graal. When it appears to Lancelot in the Castle of
Corbenic, it is still upon a table of silver, but this time
the object is covered with red in place of white samite,
and it is surrounded by angels. In the course of the
ceremony Lancelot sees three men, who represent the
Trinity, exalted above the head of the officiating priest.
Two of them place the youngest between the hands of
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the priest, who again exalts him. On another occasion a
child enters visibly into the substance of the Mass-bread.
A man is also elevated, bearing the signs of the Passion of
Christ, and this Personage issues out of the Vessel, coming
subsequently among the knights present, and causing
them to communicate sacramentally. It is after this
episode that the Graal is removed to the spiritual city of
Sarras. There Christ appears to Galahad and his com-
panions, and this is the last manifestation in connection
with the Sacred Vessel. It is the viaticum of the haul
prince^ who thereafter exercises the high option which has
been granted previously and demands that he should be
taken away.
As the chief Hallow in the Parsifal of Wolfram differs
from all the other romances, it will be left for more full
consideration in dealing with the German cycle ; but seeing
that in this cycle there are correspondences outside this
great poem with the Northern French accounts, one of
these may be placed here so as to illustrate the Germanic
allusions to the Sacred Vessel in the general understanding
thereof. Diu Crbne^ the poem of Heinrich, says that it was
borne on a cloth of samite and had a base of red gold, on
which a reliquary of gold and gems was superposed. It
was carried by a crowned maiden. There is here, how-
ever, a fresh departure from the Graal in Christian sym-
bolism, for as, on the one hand, it is the quest of a feigned
and impossible hero, so, on the other, the content ascribed
to the reliquary is not the true content. It holds the
semblance of bread, as if that of the Divine Body, but
the wine or royal blood, which corresponds to the second
element of the Eucharist, is distilled from the Lance of
the legend.
We are now approaching the term of the inquiry
allocated to this section, and it will be seen on reflection
that we have three possible hypotheses regarding the
precious vessel : ( i ) that it was a cruet or phial, wherein
the blood of Christ was reserved permanently — in which
case we can understand the legend on the score of com-
102
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
parative possibility; (2) that it was an open platter or
bowl, which, it is obvious, could have had no permanent
content, much less the precious or indeed any other
blood ; (3) that it corresponded to the notion of a
chalice, but probably with a cover, after the manner of a
ciborium. It is in late texts that the vessel appears most
indubitably in connection with the sacrifice of the Mass ;
it was and could be only that which was recognised by
Diu Crttne of Heinrich and by John of Tynemouth —
namely, a reliquary ; but the mystic side of the legend,
reflecting in the minds of the romancers many conflicting
issues, took it over to the Eucharist, influenced by the
irresistible connection between the sacramental blood and
the sang real poured out at the Crucifixion. There is
evidence that this view is almost coincident with the
marriage of the legend to romance. The mind of
romance connected the vessel and its office with secret
words of consecration and a wonderful grade of priest-
hood, the root-matter of which must have been drawn
from some source wherein relics could have counted for
little in the presence of the higher secrets of sanctity.
In conclusion as to this matter, the Holy Graal, accord-
ing to the Greater Chronicles, was not the only Hallow
which was brought into Britain by those whose mission
was to preach first the gospel therein, but it was more
especially the exotic of the legend, as this was developed
in Northern France. In several cases the other Hallows,
as we shall see, were either present in Britain or arrived
some centuries later. As regards the Lesser Chronicles,
it is warrantable to decide that, in the mind of Robert
de Borron, the Sacred Vessel was a ciborium or covered
chalice, and that in some manner which is not clearly
declared it was connected with a sacramental service per-
formed in great seclusion. As regards the Greater
Chronicles, it was originally a Dish, and that Dish in
which the Paschal Lamb was eaten at the Last Supper ;
but from the very beginning of this ascription the
notion of a cup was essential to the Eucharistic office
103
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
which also resided in the Vessel ; in the Book of the Holy
Graal a cup is inserted therein, but in later texts of the
cycle the Dish sometimes undergoes transmutation and
reappears as a chalice.
IV
THE GRAAL 7ESSEL CONSIDERED AS A
BOWL OF PLENTT
The incidental allusions which have been made already
to certain physical properties which are ascribed to the
Holy Graal in several branches of the literature seem
to call at this point for some further explanation, without
anticipating what will be said at the close as to any
higher aspects of this tradition or exhausting specifically
its connections with folk-lore, which remain to be stated
separately. The conception itself seems so repugnant to
all that we attach to the Graal that it is at least desirable
to ascertain its scope in the texts. As it is acknowledged
to embody a reversion from old non-Christian fable, we
should expect it to be most prominent in those texts
which are nearest to the transitional stage, and more
especially in the Chretien portion of the Conte del Graal.
It should be understood in the first place — as indeed it
follows sufficiently from previous sections — that in the
Perceval quests — one version excepted — and in more than
one of the Gawain quests the visit to the Graal Castle is
followed by a banquet or supper, at which the questing
knight is treated for the most part as an honoured guest.
The exception as regards Perceval is in the longer prose
romance or High History, the action of which is subse-
quent to the first visit of the hero, and he does not enter it
a second time till he has taken it by force of arms out of
the hands of God's enemy and the enemy of Holy Church.
In other cases, where the ceremonial meal is described —
sometimes at considerable length — it is nearly always at
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
the table and before or in the midst of the festival that
the Graal and the other Hallows make their processional
appearance, and there are certain texts which say that the
Sacred Vessel serves the high company — sometimes with
rarest meats, sometimes also with wine. In these specific
instances the manifestation is that which occurs first after
they are seated at table. It was to be expected, as I
have said, that we should hear of this material efficacy in
Chretien, but though the courses of the banquet are de-
scribed fully, and are rare and precious enough, it is only
a high reverence in a lordly castle of this world, and it
is precisely from this text that it proves wanting. The
wonder resides in the Hallows, but they dispense nothing
to the body. It follows from this that the metrical
romance of De Borron was not written to explain Chretien.
It follows also that Gautier had no precedent in the poet
who was his precursor, and it was therefore from other
antecedents that he derived his notion of the Feeding Dish
and from yet others his knowledge of early Graal history
which does not appear in Chretien. When Gautier brings
Gawain to the Graal Castle, he says that the Sacred Vessel
served seven courses, but the wine was served by the
butlers. His idea of the Sacred Vessel must therefore
have corresponded rather to the Paschal Dish than to a
Reliquary of the Precious Blood. On the other hand, his
account of Perceval's second visit contains no allusion to
this side of the festival. Manessier, in continuation of the
same visit, offers no suggestion ; but when the time comes
for him to tell the story of Perceval's third arrival, the
Hallows appear in their order and all are filled at the
table. At the fourth and final visit, and the coronation
of the questing knight, Manessier recounts how the Graal
feeds the whole company with costliest meats. On the
other hand, Gerbert, preoccupied by far other matters,
gives no indication of the kind.
Except in so far as the Early History of Merlin repro-
duces one episode from the Lesser Holy Graal, it has no
allusion to the properties under consideration, and they
105
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
have passed out of all recollection in the Didot Perceval.
On the other hand, the Greater Chronicles, represented
by the Book of the Holy Graal and the Quest of Galahad,
embody a marked development of this particular tradition.
Between them there is the later Merlin without any refer-
ence whatever, the prose Lancelot — to which we shall see
that it is a foreign element — and the Longer Prose Perceval
into the consciousness of whose author it has never once en-
tered and by whom it would, I think, have been repudiated.
Its recurrence, on a single occasion, in the presence of
Galahad, and in connection with his story, may seem un-
searchable, having regard to the claims which inhere in
this romance, but in the order of the texts it is explained
by the antecedents in the first form of the first document
of the cycle. We must recur, therefore, to the root-
matter of the early histories.
The poem of Robert de Borron narrates that among
those who accompanied Joseph westward a certain number
departed from grace through the sin of luxury, but the
spiritual mind of the minstrel has spared us all par-
ticulars. The result was a famine in the company ; it
does not appear that it fell upon all without exception,
for the fact that there was want among the people had
to be notified to the leaders ; but, these apart, good and
bad seem to have suffered indifferently. An appeal was
made to Brons that he should take counsel with Joseph,
which was done accordingly, and Joseph invoked the
Son of God on his knees in the presence of the Graal,
reciting the petition of his people, who were in need
of bread and meat. He was told in reply to expose the
Sacred Vessel openly in the presence of the brethren,
on a table similar to that of his own Last Supper, —
by which means the sinners will be discovered speedily.
It is Christ Himself who was speaking, and He ordained
further that Brons should repair to a certain water and
there angle for a fish. The first which he caught must
be brought straightway to Joseph, who, on his part,
should place it upon the Graal table over against the
106
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
Sacred Vessel. The people were then to be summoned
and informed that if they were true believers, who had
kept the commandments and followed out the teach-
ings of Christ, as given through Joseph, so that they
had trespassed in nothing, they would be welcome to sit
down at the table. These instructions were followed,
with the result that a part only of the company accepted
this invitation. The table was arranged duly, and
whosoever was seated thereat had the accomplishment
of his heart's desire, and that entirely. Petrus, who
was one of the recipients, asked the crowd who stood
about whether they did not experience anything of the
good which penetrated those at the table, and they
answered that they felt nothing. Thereupon Petrus
denounced them as guilty of the vile, dolorous sin, and
they went forth out of the house of Joseph covered with
shame. The poem says : —
" La taule toute pleinne estoit,
Fors le liu qui pleins ne pooit
Estre ; "
but the experience of the sitters, thus collected together,
seems to indicate that they were fed from within rather
than from without. It will be seen and we must always
remember that the chief necessity and often the chief
privation of early quests and ventures in the voyages
of romance was that of food in season, but in this case
what I have called the spiritual mind of the poet could
not clearly connect the idea of physical refreshment with
the sacramental powers of the Relic. As regards the
elect who were present, when the service was finished
each of them rose up and went out among the rest,
Joseph commanding that they should return day by day
to partake of the grace administered. Thus was the
vessel, says the poem, proved for the first time. In
the speech of Petrus to the people who were rejected
there is further evidence that the sustenance was more
especially of the spiritual order, and it is important
107
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
to establish this point from the earliest of the Graal
histories. He speaks of the great delight experienced
in the Grace and of the great joy with which the com-
municants were penetrated. They were filled as the
Psalmist was filled and she who sang the Magnificat :
Esurientes implevit bonis. What was filled was the heart
of man, and what was refected was the entire soul. My
contention is therefore that Robert de Borron had the
idea of the Feeding Dish present to his mind when
he made the scarcity of food for his company an oppor-
tunity for the discriminating test of the second great
table of refection, but in place of bodily meat and bread,
symbolised by the single fish, as something intentionally
placed out of all reasonable proportion, he administered
extasis. That question of Petrus to the unworthy crowd
about him : Do you experience nothing ? is so evidently
impossible, in their case, as a reference to eating and
drinking that there is no need to dwell thereon. It
left no opportunity to the prose editors whose versions
complete the trilogy, and they lose all touch with the
notion.
As regards the Fish, by which we shall be brought at
a later stage to another form of symbolism found in the
poem, the text offers a comparison which, although a
little cryptic, seems also significant. It says that in the
sight of the Graal, in its company and the service thereof,
true believers experience as much satisfaction as a fish,
which, having been taken by a man in his hand, has con-
trived to escape therefrom and again go swimming in
the sea. The specific fish of the story was placed before
the Sacred Vessel exactly in the middle of the table, and
was covered with a cloth. There is no suggestion that
it was eaten, and it appears to have remained as a kind of
fixed dish whenever the service was celebrated.
The noticeable point about the poem is that the
material sustenance provided once only by the sacred
vessel, as something nihil ad rent, is passed over so
slightly and lightly that on the face of the text it is
108
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
a matter of inference whether the Company partook
(#) of anything physical at all, except the broken meats
which remained in the stewardship of the camp ; or (£)
alternately of anything except the Eucharist, which cer-
tainly provides bodily sustenance in the most material of
the sacramental texts. On the other hand, all processes of
language are enlisted by Robert de Borron to show that
they were sustained spiritually. Further, the palmary
miracle accomplished by the vessel on this occasion was
not any kind of refreshment, spiritual or corporeal, but
that of discrimination between the good and evil among
the people : for this kind of judgment the table of Joseph
was set up and the goats were separated from the sheep.
There was, I suppose, in the poet's mind no question
that what could nourish the soul, which is vital, could
at need refresh the body, which is accessory only. It
is therefore small wonder that when the fountain text
says so little, those which derive therefrom are content
to leave it thereat, and they add nothing. For Joseph
and his brethren it remained that the Lord was the part
of my chalice, and perhaps in the last understanding
the famine which fell upon the companions was the
scarcity of grace in the soul rather than of food in
the stomach.
Now, on the other hand, the Book of the Holy Graal is
in one sense the legend of the Feeding Dish consecrated
and exalted, and seeing that as the texts stand it is that
from which the greatest of all quests and the most
wonderful version of all the quests which are accessory
must be supposed to derive ex hypothesi, it is essential
that we should understand its position clearly, and I will
tabulate the references as follows : —
(i) The people on their way to Britain are fed
marvellously with all manner of viands, both meat
and drink, as, for example, at houses by the way and
at lordly castles. (2) In this primary allusion the
Graal is not said to feed them. (3) They receive
nourishment from the table of the Graal, but this is
109
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the Eucharist, and it is expressly stated that the com-
pany had nothing else on that day. (4) At a later
stage, a second instance is given of this super-substantial
refreshment. (5) It is not till we are approaching
comparatively the close of the chronicle that we reach
something more definite. The company are already in
Britain, and through the persecution of their heathen
enemies they are hungry. Twelve loaves are obtained ;
they are broken by Joseph, are placed in the Dish, and
they feed 500 people, more than the twelve loaves
being left subsequently. (6) It does not prove food
of spiritual life, for those who were filthy before are
filthy still. (7) At yet a later stage, the heathens
test the feeding powers of the Vessel by the imprison-
ment of the Christians. In Wales the Vessel again
furnishes all manner of viands, and one fish is a super-
abundant provision for the whole company. After a
similar manner, they are fed with all possible delicacies
in Scotland.
Passing over the later Merlin romances, which are
neither exactly Graal histories nor quests, and offer
nothing to our purpose, we find that the shadow of the
Quest is projected into the prose Lancelot, though there
is no questing intention, and the visit of Gawain to the
Graal Castle is the one example of indignity offered
to a guest therein. The responsibility, however, does
not rest with the royal and saintly host, whose " high-
erected thought " is " seated in a heart of courtesy."
There is the flight of the mystical dove from case-
ment to inmost Shrine, as if the bird went to renew
the virtues of the Holy Graal ; there is the apparition
of the unattended damozel, bearing that which itself
bore the likeness of a chalice ; there is the genuflection
of all knees before the Holy Vessel ; and there are
sweet odours with all delicacies lavished upon the great
table. But in the feast which follows, the peer of
the Round Table alone has an empty plate. It was
the discrimination and forejudgment of the Hallow in
1 10
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
respect of that Knight, who, in the days of Galahad,
would indeed propose the Quest but would not persevere
therein.
In the Longer Prose Perceval, after the restitution
of all things, there is abundance everywhere in the
Castle, a insomuch that there is nought wanting that is
needful for the bodies of noble folk," even as for noble
souls. But the source of all this plenty is in a river
which comes from the Earthly Paradise and not in the
Holy Graal. On the occasion of Gawain's visit, the
table is garnished richly, but it is with game of the
forest and other meats of this world ; it is the same
on the arrival of Lancelot ; and then even the earthly
food does not vary.
In the Quest of Galahad the manifestations of the
Graal are as follows: (i) In the banqueting-hall of
King Arthur, and it is the only record of its ap-
pearance in any castle of the external world, the reason
being that the Graal is " going about." On this
occasion — yes, even in the presence of Galahad —
" every knight had such meats and drinks as he best
loved in this world." As the table was dight for the
festival, it seems to follow that what was otherwise
provided already underwent transformation, probably
in the minds of the participants. (2) At the stone
cross in the forest and in the waste land, where stood
the old chapel and where in the presence of Lancelot
the sick knight was made whole by the Precious Vessel.
(3) To Lancelot in the Graal Castle, where there
was, firstly, a Mass of the Graal, and, secondly, a
banquet at which all were fed by the Vessel. (4) To
Galahad and his elect companions at the consummation
of the Quest, but the sweet meats were those of the
Eucharist exalted to the arch-natural degree. (5) In
Sarras at the close of all, " when the deadly flesh began
to behold the spiritual things," and Christ's transcendence
was manifested in Christ's immanence. Of these five
changes in the exposition of the Holy Graal, the first
in
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
only and the lowest was that of earthly food ; it was
communicated by a special indulgence, in the palace of
a lord of the world, as an encouragement to the quest of
Heaven.
If we turn to the German cycle, we shall find that
the feeding qualities are before all things obvious in
Wolfram. At the first visit of Parsifal, what is
taken from the Graal is bread, but other dishes stand
before it in right great plenty, both rare and common.
Some say that there are no such riches on earth, but
to the poet this is a word of foolishness, since the Graal
is the crown of all. The wine also was the gift of the
precious object, and the cups on the table were filled by
the power thereof. In the great and high festival, when
the questing Knight was crowned as King and Warden of
the mystery, even the ordinary fowl of the forest were
taken from the Graal. I am afraid that such ministry
in the Parsifal is comparable to the procession therein,
somewhat indiscriminate in method and " like a tale of
little meaning, though the words are strong." In the
curious chronicle of Heinrich, the service of the table
is after the manner born of this world, but the host
does not partake till he is served from the sacred Reli-
quary with something which, by its description, bears
the external semblance of the symbolical Bread of
Heaven. The poem, however, has otherwise no sacra-
mental connections, nor has the Vessel, strictly speaking,
what is understood here by feeding properties.
It remains now to sum up and to ask in our hearts —
though the answer is remote in our quest — what is the
meaning of all this disconcerting medley, which out of
the Holy Graal, as an issue in time and place, brings
now the voice of an oracle, like the classical Btetylus ;
now a certain /3ao-ayo? or touchstone, a criterion of
judgment which separates the good from the evil ; now
a suspended viaticum, which keeps the sick alive and
the dead in a false life, but offers no relief in suffering ;
now manifests the corporeal changes in the growth of
112
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
the Divine Body ; now shows Christ crucified ; and now
out of all reason — like a coarse Talmudic allegory-
provides the game of the forest — all commonest and
rarest meats ; yet in all and through all is (a) the
Mystery of the Eucharist, and (£) a simple reliquary
containing ex hypothesi the Precious Blood of the Re-
deemer. At the moment let us note further — and this
only — as a little curious, that two out of the three
express texts of transubstantiation are texts of the Feeding
Dish, but the third in the series has spiritualised all its
houses and acknowledges not the flesh or its ministry
except in the Eucharist. The Chretien portion of the
Conte del Graal is a pagan wonder-book tinctured
thinly with Christianity, but it is not nearly so gross
regarding the service of the Sacred Vessel as the Book
of the Holy Graal or the Great Quest itself. There is
more in Gautier than in Chretien, and very much more
in Wolfram than in the putative Walter Map. But
those who continued and those who finished the Conte
are fitful in their introduction of the feeding element, and
the romance of Galahad puts the disconcerting cere-
monial outside the holy places of the mystic Castle.
I think, in conclusion, that the intention of the
Greater Chronicles concerning the Feeding Dish is to
be taken in another sense of the Quest of Galahad,
which says of Lancelot : " Yf ye wold aske how he
lyved, he that fedde the peple of Israel with manna in
deserte, soo was he fedde. For every day when he had
sayd his prayers, he was susteyned with the grace of
the Holy Ghoost." And, as the Welsh version has
it, c< so that he thought himself to be full of the best
meats."
113 H
'The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
THE LESSER HALLOWS OF THE LEGEND
§ A. — THE SUMMARY OF THESE MATTERS
The Hallows of the Graal legend are the beginning of
its wonders and of its meanings only ; but, as I have in-
timated already, the greater includes the lesser, and that
which is of all the highest has assumed from the be-
ginning in its symbolism the things by which it is sur-
rounded. As it is in the light of man's higher part
that we are able to interpret the lower, as the body is
explained by the soul, so even the Castle of the Graal
and the great Temple, with all their allusions and all
their sacred things, are resolved into the mystery of the
Cup, because there is a cloud of witnesses but one true
voice which is the spokesman of all. There is obviously
no need in this place — as we are concerned with the
greater subjects — to lay stress upon the subsidiary Hal-
lows as if they were an integral portion of the Holy
Graal regarded symbolically. They are of the accidents
only, and as such they are not vital. The Lance is
important to the legends, but not otherwise than from
the legendary standpoint ; the Sword is also important,
but not in a sacramental sense ; the Dish signifies nothing,
or next to nothing. The explanation is that the French
literature of the Holy Graal, in its form as now extant,
has on the external side its roots in traditions and memo-
rials connected with the Passion of Christ. The different
cycles of the literature develop their account of these
memorials with motives that vary, but they combine there-
with certain sacred objects derived from other sources and
not belonging logically to the scheme. They worked,
for example, upon pre-existent materials which were not
assimilated wholly into the matter of the romances, and
114
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
it is largely these portions for which, in any scheme of
interpretation, we shall be scarcely able to account unless
upon divergent lines.
Speaking generally of the Lesser Hallows, the follow-
ing points are clear. The German cycle, as represented
by Wolfram, derived its idea of the Lance from a source
in folk-lore apart from the Graal legend as we know it
in Northern French. The Northern French literature
is clear as to those Hallows connecting with the Passion
of Christ ; these are the Cup, otherwise the Paschal Dish,
and the Lance. It is dubious and variable about the
Sword and Dish or Platter, for which there are no ante-
cedents in the Passion. Several texts have carried over
some of the Hallows without modification from folk-lore,
even when great Christian relics were ready to their hands.
For example, the sword used by Peter at Gethsemane
did not occur to them, though it would have been more
to their purpose, the reason being that there was no
official tradition concerning it in the external life of the
Church. The Dish is in the same position of unmodi-
fied folk-lore ; the platter on which the head of St. John
the Baptist was served to Herodias is a chance missed even
by the Longer Prose Perceval, despite its allocation of
the Sword to the instrument of the Precursor's martyrdom.
Other subsidiary Hallows, mentioned therein, which are
by way of after-thought, increase without exhausting the
possible relics of the Passion — one of them tells of
the Crown of Thorns ; another of the cloth with which
Christ was covered when He was laid on the sepulchre ;
and yet another of the sacred nails used at the Cruci-
fixion. I do not remember that the scourge has occurred
to any maker of texts. The Crown of Thorns was
called the Golden Circle, having been set in precious
metal and jewels by the Queen of the Castle where it
was preserved. We have also the pincers wherewith the
nails were drawn from the limbs of Christ when He was
taken down from the Cross. Finally, the shield of Judas
Maccabaeus is met with in one romance, where it is won
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
in battle by Gawain. The Sword has been also referred
to the same prince in Israel.
I suppose that the legend of the face-cloth, which is
part of the Veronica legend, is the earliest of the Passion
relics, and among the evangelisation traditions, that of
Lazarus and his companions coming to the South of
France, carrying the face-cloth with them, has the palm
of antiquity in the West. But this relic, though it
occupies an important position in the early history of
the Graal, is not included among the Hallows of the
Graal Castle.
The metrical romance of De Borron has one Hallow
only, and this is the first extant Graal history. The
first extant Quest is that portion of the Conte del
Graal which we owe to Chretien ; so far as his work
is concerned there are four Hallows — the Vessel called
Graal, the Lance, the Sword and the Dish. The
Lance has been called his particular introduction. The
Didot Perceval, which is thought to owe something to
Chretien, introduces the Lance without any explanation
concerning it. The Chretien sequels, the Longer Prose
Perceval and the Galahad Quest, lay stress upon the
Sacred Sword, which is usually broken, and the task of
the elect hero is to re-solder the weapon. In all texts
the Lance ranks next to the Cup in importance, and
when the one is removed to heaven at the close of
the Galahad Quest, it is accompanied by the other.
The Longer Prose Perceval is a very late Quest, and
it has Hallows innumerable. The Book of the Holy
Graal, at least in its present form, is a very late history,
and it introduces the Nails of the Passion ; it gives also
an invented and artificial allegory to account for the
Sword.
It being obvious, as I have said, that the Sword and
the Dish are but little to the purpose of the Graal, it
will not be difficult to understand that those who took
over these objects from antecedent legends were not of
one mind concerning them, more especially in respect
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
of the Dish, which remains a superfluity in the pageant
and a hindrance in the symbolism as it stands. The
Sword in several instances is important especially, as I
have said, to the plot of the story, but it has no reason
in the symbolism.
8 B. — LEGENDS OF THE SACRED LANCE
t*
In the Gautier section of the Conte del Graal, and
in the description of Gawain's visit to the Graal Castle,
he sees among the sacred objects a Lance, which bleeds
into a silver cup, but it is not the Cup of the Graal.
The Lance is the weapon which pierced the side of
Christ, and it is said that it will bleed till Doomsday.
The body of the arm was of wood. The blade was white
as snow, and the weapon was at the head of the master
dais ; it seems to have reposed in the vessel, and two
tapers were burning before it. The stream of blood
issued from the point of the Lance and ran down
into the vessel, from which, as it overflowed, it poured
into a channel of gold and ran without the Hall. This
extravagant description is substituted for a much simpler
account in Chretien's portion of the poem ; there only
a single drop of blood trickles down to the hand of the
squire who bears the weapon in the pageant. The fuller
historical account is found in Manessier's section, which
says that the Lance is that of the Roman soldier who
pierced the side of Christ. According to a Montpellier
manuscript, Joseph of Arimathasa was present at the foot
of the Cross, and seeing, as the spear was withdrawn, how
the blood ran down, he collected it in the Holy Vessel,
turning black as he did so with sorrow. The Didot
Perceval says only that a squire in the Graal Castle
carried a Lance in his two hands, that it was that of
Longinus, and that a drop of blood flowed from the sacred
point. I believe that this romance represents a primitive
state of the Christian Quest, though it is late in its
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actual form, the reason being that the Hallows of the
Passion are the only wonder-objects which belong pro-
perly to the Quest. The wider field of vision offered
in the Greater Chronicles and the multiplication of
relics are indubitable signs of lateness. In the Book of
the Holy Graal the Hallows which are seen in the vision
preceding the ordination of the younger Joseph are a
great ensanguined cross, three nails from which blood
seems to flow, a Lance of which the iron point is stained
also with blood, an ensanguined cincture and a bended
rod dyed in the same manner. It will be seen that the
writer of this romance knew well enough that with the
Graal itself he could connect only the things thereto
belonging — namely, the other Relics of the Passion, and
realising this fact in later branches of his Chronicle,
while he perpetuates other objects through centuries of
hidden life, he is careful not to locate them in the Graal
Castle. The Ruth Merlin is the only legend of the
prophet which knows of another Hallow than the
Sacred Vessel ; and this is the Lance, but the circumstances
under which it is introduced and the account which is
given concerning it belong to a later stage of our re-
search. I may say, however, that it was an instrument
of mystic vengeance, and as such it reappears in the great
prose Lancelot. It is seen there by Gawain, who is
smitten by its blade of fire, and afterwards is healed by
the Graal. It is seen also by Sir Bors when he visits
Corbenic ; an old man carries it in one hand, while he
swings a censer with the other. In the romance of
Galahad, as we know it, the Lance manifests twice, and
this is at the end of the Quest, when it is borne in one
hand by an angel, who holds in the other a box to receive
the blood from its point. The ipsissima verba of the
Longer Prose Perceval are that of the Hallows there
are " right great plenty." Perceval's shield had in the
boss thereof some of the Blood of our Lord and a piece
of His garment ; they were placed therein by Joseph of
Arimathaea. As regards the Lance itself, the point
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
bleeds into the Holy Graal, and here also the weapon is
one of vengeance, or rather of doom, for he who is
elected to the Quest has something to perform in respect
of it, and he fails therein. This notwithstanding, the
Hallow in the romance under notice serves little pur-
pose, because it does nothing. For the sake of
completeness the Lesser Hallows of the German cycle
may be mentioned with great brevity in this section,
though their history and import must be held over for a
very long time to come. In the Parsifal of Wolfram,
the ensanguined head of a Lance is carried round
a certain chamber ; it has no connection with the Pas-
sion, but once more it is a memorial of vengeance, of
fatality which is long and grievous. In Heinrich's Dili
Crone, the Lance is held by two young men, and it
sheds three great drops of blood, which are received in
a salver. I should observe in conclusion, for the time
being, as to this Hallow that the French cycle may be
classified in three sections, of which A does not mention
the Lance, B mentions but does not explain its antecedents,
and C says that it is the Lance of Longinus used at the
Crucifixion. Late or early, there is no other history
concerning it.
§ C. — THE BROKEN SWORD
The Graal Cup was not so much connected with the
Passion as originated therefrom, because it is clear in
history that, or ever Robert de Borron spoke of secret
words, the meaning of Mass chalices, and the transit of
the Great Hallow from East to West, the Precious
Blood had been brought already within the wonder-world
of relics. So also the sacred Lance had received its
justification in tradition before it was exalted in
romance. The allocation of other objects within the
same sphere of devotion was so natural that it was not
likely to be resisted, but it must be observed that the
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attributions were inherited and not invented by the makers
of books of chivalry. Face-cloth and loin-cloth, nails
and crown of thorns had long been included among
the objects provided for veneration before the Book
of the Holy Graal or the Longer Prose Perceval had
dreamed of registering them among the Hallows of the
Graal ark, or otherwhere in their holy and marvellous
shrines. That they were capable of inventing relics is
shown by the history of the sacred Sword, and such relics
had their imputed antecedents in Scripture; but the things
of the Passion of Christ were too sacred for their inter-
ference, and they were left in the hands of the Church.
The Church perhaps was not idle, and the Church did
not scruple perhaps, but minstrels and weavers of stories
knew their proper limits and abode therein. Their
respect in the case under notice guarantees it in yet
another, for which reason I hold it as certain that never
did Robert de Borron tamper with Eucharistic formulae,
or, in other words, that, whether from far or near, he
inherited and did not invent the sacred words of the
mystery.
The Sword of the Graal is considerable under two aspects
— firstly, as a derivative from folk-lore, which passes, as
we have seen, through certain branches of the literature
without suffering an especial change in its nature ;
secondly, as a hallowed object having an imputed deri-
vation from the history of the Church of God under one of
its two covenants. In the second case, we must be prepared
to find — and this is natural also — that certain reflections
from folk-lore, as from the earlier state of the object, are
to be found in its consecrated form. In the Chretien
portion of the Conte del Graal the Sword is sus-
pended from the neck of a page or squire and is
brought to the Master of the House as a present from
his niece, with leave to bestow it apparently howsoever
he will, so only that it shall be well used. An inscrip-
tion upon it says that it will never break except in one
peril, which is known only to the smith who forged it.
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
In his time as a craftsman he made three such weapons,
and no others will follow. As regards this particular
example, the belt was worth a treasure, the crosspiece
was of fine gold, and the sheath was of Venetian smith's
work. It is given to Perceval by the King of the Graal
Castle as something to him predestined. But it is only
at a later stage that he learns under what circumstances
it will fly in pieces and how it may be repaired — namely,
by plunging it in a certain lake which is hard by the
smithy of him who wrought it. The continuation of
Gautier ignores these facts and reproduces the Sword
at the Castle, where it is carried by a crowned knight ;
it is broken already and Gawain is asked to resolder it,
in which task he fails. Perceval succeeds, on the occa-
sion of his second visit, except for a slight crevice, thus
proving that, at least in a certain measure, he is a lover of
God, a true knight, and one who loves also the Church,
which is the Spouse of God. The conclusion of Manes-
sier furnishes the history of the Hallow in full, though it
has been the subject of allusion previously : (a) one stroke
was given therewith ; it destroyed the realm of Logres
and the country thereto adjacent ; (V) this stroke was
inflicted on the King's brother, in the course of a battle ;
(c] when the King himself took up the fragments un-
warily, he was pierced through the thigh, and the wound
will be healed only when his brother's death has been
avenged. In Chretien, on the contrary, the wound of the
Graal King is caused by a spear which passes through his
two thighs. The intercalation or alternative conclusion
of Gerbert sends Perceval again into exile, because certain
imperfections in his life account for the fact that he cannot
resolder the Sword, and the Quest must be fulfilled better.
The Hallow remains in the Castle, but another sword is
introduced and serves to indicate that behind the strange
memorial of this unknown poet there were sources of
legend which, if we could now recover them, might place
yet another construction upon the root-matter of the
Graal legend. In Gerbert the sword under notice is
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broken not in a conflict which calls for a conventional
vengeance, after the worthless motives of folk-lore, but
in an attempt to enforce an entrance into the Earthly
Paradise.
Passing over the Lesser Chronicles, which, although
in the Didot Perceval it is hinted on one occasion that
there were many worthy relics, make no reference to the
Sword, and coming to the Greater Chronicles we find
that in the Book of the Holy Graal there is a Hallow
of this kind, and it is very important from the standpoint
of the romance itself and for the Quest which follows there-
from. It was the sword of David the King, and it was
placed, as we have seen, by Solomon in a mysterious ship
destined to sail the seas for centuries as a testimony to
Galahad that his ancestor was aware of his coming at the
end of the times of the Graal. During the course of its
history more than one wound is inflicted therewith, and the
circumstances under which it is broken are also told vari-
ously. In the Book of the Holy Graal there are actually two
swords ; to that of David the particular virtue ascribed is
that no one can draw it — before the predestined hero in
the days of the Quest — without being visited heavily for
his rashness. The doom works automatically even to the
infliction of death. It is only by a kind of accident that
this sword is broken, and then it is rejoined instantly,
according to one of the codices. In another there is a
distinct account, which does not say how or whether the
sword was resoldered in fine. As regards the second sword,
it is merely an ordinary weapon with which Joseph II. is
smitten by a certain seneschal when he is endeavouring to
convert the prince of a certain part of Great Britain. The
sword breaks when it pierces him, and the point remains
in the wound. After various miracles, which result in
the general conversion of the people, the sufferer places
his hand on the point of the sword, which is apparently
protruding from his thigh ; it comes out of the wound,
and the place heals up immediately. Joseph then takes
the two portions of the broken sword and says : " God
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
grant that this good weapon shall never be soldered except
by him who is destined to accomplish the adventure of the
Siege Perilous at the Round Table, in the time of King
Arthur; and God grant also that the point shall not
cease to exude blood until the two portions are so
soldered."
It is reasonable to expect that these Hallows should
prove a source of confusion as to their duplication and
their purpose. I do not conceive that the sword which is
brought out of Fairyland in the Huth Merlin , which is
claimed by Balan, which brings about the Dolorous Stroke
—though this is inflicted actually by another instrument,
which in fine involves the two brothers in mutual de-
struction, can be connected with either of the weapons with
which we have been just dealing. The alternative later
Merlin has no mystery of swords which can be identified
with the Hallow of the Graal, and the prose Lancelot
knows nothing of that of David. It speaks, however, of
a knight named Elias, who carries two swords ; one of
them is enclosed in a priceless sheath, and is said to be
that which pierced the loins of Joseph of Arimathaea and
was broken therein. It is scarcely necessary to notice that
the father here is confused with the son. The Quest
of Galahad distinguishes the two swords, except in the
Welsh version, which identifies them by a natural mis-
chance. That one of them by which Joseph was wounded
is presented to Galahad for soldering, and when the elect
knight has performed the task, it is given into the charge
of Bors, because he was a good knight and a worthy man.
After the soldering "it arose grete and marvellous, and
was full of grete hete that many men felle for drede." It
seems to follow that it was brought back to Logres on the
return of Sir Bors from Sarras. The Sword of David was
carried to Sarras, as we may infer, by Galahad, but it was
not taken to heaven with the Graal and Lance, the reason
being doubtless that it was not a symbol of the Passion.
In the Longer Prose Perceval the Sword, as we know, is that
with which St. John the Baptist was beheaded, and though
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there is, firstly, no attempt to account for the presence
of this Hallow in England, nor, secondly, any reference
to it in early literature, the identification helps us to
understand better its place among the Hallows, as some
other swords met with in the literature have scarcely a
title to be included with sacred objects. The office of
Gawain, before he can know anything of Graal mysteries,
is to obtain this Sword from its wrongful keepers, and
herein he succeeds. The scabbard is loaded with precious
stones and the mountings are of silk with buttons of gold.
The hilt has also precious stones, and the pommel is a holy
and sacred stone set upon it by a certain Roman Emperor.
When the Sword came forth from the scabbard it was
covered with blood, and this seems always to have been
the case at the hour of noon, which was the time of the
saint's martyrdom. When noon has passed it becomes
clear and green like an emerald. It is the same length
as another sword, but when sheathed neither the weapon
nor the scabbard seems to be of two spans length. It is
said on the testimony of Josephus that the Old Law was
destroyed by a stroke of this sword without recovery, and
that to effect the destruction our Lord Himself suffered
to be smitten in the side with the Spear. These things
are not to be understood on the open sense of the text.
The Greater Chronicles of the Graal may be, as
they indeed are, upon God's side, but the judgment
concerning this sub-section of the Lesser Hallows must
be that the Sword is an impediment before the face of
the symbolism of the cycle, and often an idle wonder
which we could wish to be taken out of the way. We
could wish also — or at least I personally — that something
of the mystery behind the ascription of Gerbert might
come at this day into our hands. In the Parsifal of
Wolfram the hero of that great Quest is refreshed as by
fruits brought from the Earthly Paradise on the occasion
of his first visit to the Temple of the Holy Graal. We
know not how or why, but this is another reflection,
probably from the source of Gerbert, and one which takes
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
us no further, except that from time to time, by dim hints
and allusions, we see that the legend of the Graal is not
so far apart from the legend of Eden. In this manner
we recur to the German cycle, and there we find that
there is a sword of mark in the Parsifal; it is that
which was given to the hero by Amfortas, the Graal King.
Now that this, amidst any variations, is the same story as
that which is told by Chretien is rather evident than likely.
Another sword broke when Parsifal was fighting with his
unknown brother Feirfis, because it would not drink the
blood of his kinship, and this is the far antithesis of some
of the French stories. In Heinrich's Diu Crtine, a fair
youth of exalted mien carries a fair broad sword, which
he lays before the King of the Castle, and this sword is
given by the King to Gawain after he has asked the question
which we know to be all important.
In conclusion as to this matter, the Hallow of the
Sword is not unlike a corresponding weapon in some of
the grades of Masonic chivalry ; in the same way as the
reverend Knights therein do not, in many cases, know
how to use the symbolic arm, so in the Graal literature
the poets and romancers have accepted the custody of
something which is so little to their purpose that they
know scarcely what they shall do therewith : had they
only thought less of their folk-lore and hence omitted
it entirely, they would have told a better — aye, even a
truer — story from the standpoint of their own symbolism.
§ D. — THE DISH
The Sacred Dish being also, as we have seen, rather an
unmeaning mystery, and as although it recurs frequently
the descriptions are brief and the office which it holds is
doubtful, it will be only desirable to distinguish those
texts in which it is found. Subject to one possibility,
and this is of the speculative order, it is, as we have seen,
an unmodified survival from folk-lore ; we should there-
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
fore expect it to appear in the Chretien portion of the
Conte del Graal, and this is the case actually, but it serves
therein a very practical and mundane purpose, being used
by the King and his guest to wash their hands. It is a
silver plate and is carried by a damsel. It reappears in
one codex of the continuation by Gautier. The conclusion
by Manessier describes it after a similar manner, but its
purpose is not delineated ; Perceval asks all the necessary
questions regarding the Graal and Lance ; he asks also
concerning the Dish, but there is apparently nothing to
ask, or at least he hears nothing. At the same time it
may have had a higher significance for this poet than for
all the others, since he causes the Holy Dish to follow Per-
ceval with the other Hallows when he goes with a hermit
into the wilderness, where he serves the Lord for ten
years. Finally, he states in his last words that the Dish
was doubtless assumed into heaven with the other sacred
objects, namely, the Lance and the Sword. According to
Gerbert, a lady named Philosophine, who here, as in
another romance, figures as the mother of Perceval, came
over with Joseph of Arimathasa bearing a certain plate ;
another lady carried an ever-bleeding lance, while Joseph
himself bore a fairer vessel than eye had ever beheld. In
the Lesser Chronicles there is only a single reference, which
occurs in the Didot Perceval; when the Graal and the
other Hallows are first manifested to Perceval, it is said
that a damsel bears two silver plates, together with dra-
peries. In the Book of the Holy Graal, and on the occasion
that the Second Joseph is raised to the high pontificate,
the Paschal Dish is seen on the altar, and in the middle
place thereof is an exceedingly rich vessel of gold and
precious stones. Here the reference is probably to the
Sacramental Cup, but the account is confused ; and else-
where the complex romance presents a new aspect of
folk-lore, for there is another Dish or Charger, bearing a
great and glorious head, about which we have no explana-
tion and of which we hear nothing subsequently, either in
the text itself or in the later documents of the cycle.
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
The Dish also passes out of the horizon, not only in
the prose Lancelot but also in the Quest of Galahad.
The German cycle speaks of a Golden Salver jewelled
with precious stones and carried upon a silken cloth. It
is used in Heinrich's poem to receive the blood which
issues from the Lance.
It seems possible that there was an early tendency on
the part of Christian romancers to distinguish between
the chalice — being the Cup in which Christ made His
sacrament — and the Dish — being the vessel in which He
and His disciples ate the Paschal Lamb. They are to
some extent confused in the Book of the Holy Graal,
and the prose Lancelot knows of a single vessel only,
which is the Eucharistic Cup. If such an implicit was
present to the mind of Manessier, we can understand
why he says that the Dish was assumed into heaven.
I wonder that it has not occurred to some of those
who have preceded me in the tortuous paths and among
the pitfalls of interpretation, to understand the four
Hallows after another and more highly symbolical
manner, as follows : (i) The Chalice is the Cup of the
Sacrament ; (2) The Dish is the Paten ; (3) The Sword
symbolises the Body of Christ ; its fracture is the bruising
for our sins and the breaking for our trespasses, while at
some far distance the resoldering signifies the Resurrec-
tion ; (4) In another sense, the Spear is also the wound-
ing for our iniquities, by which the life flowed from the
body, and the issue of blood therefrom is the outgoing of
the divine life for our salvation. Yet it is not after this
manner that we shall come into the truth of the Graal,
while it is likely enough that hereabouts is one of those
pits which bring the unwary to destruction.
We shall meet with all the Hallows under a very
slight modification in the most unexpected of all places,
but this will be at a later stage. We shall then see that
the people preserved something besides folk-lore, or that
folk-lore had other meanings behind it than the recog-
nised schools would be disposed to attribute thereto.
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VI
THE CASTLE OF THE HOLT GRAAL
The true legitimacies are for the most part in exile, or
otherwise with their rights in abeyance. The real
canons of literature can be uttered only behind doors
or in the secrecy of taverns. The secrets of the great
orthodoxies are very seldom communicated, even to
epopts on their advancement. The highest claims of
all are not so much wanting in warrant as wanting those
spokesmen who are willing to utter them. We shall not
be surprised, therefore, to find that the custodians of the
Holy Graal, which was a mystery of all secrecy, c< there
where no sinner can be," despite the kingly titles ascribed
to them, sometimes abode in the utmost seclusion.
Let us seek in the first instance to realise the nature
and the place of that Castle or Temple which, according
to the legend, was for a period of centuries the sanctuary
of the Sacred Vessel and of the other hallowed objects
connected therewith. It is in the several locations of the
Hallows that we shall come at a later time into a fuller
understanding of their offices and of the meanings which
may lie behind them. They are not to be regarded
exactly as part of the mystery of the Castle ; but at least
this is more than a casket, and between the container and
the things contained, distinct though their significance
may be, there are points of correlation, so that the one
throws light on the other.
We have seen that the Vessel itself was brought from
Salem to Britain, and it follows from the historical texts
that the transit had a special purpose, one explanation of
which will be found ready to our hands when the time
comes for its consideration. The Castle is described
after several manners, the later romances being naturally
the more specific, and we get in fine a geographical settle-
ment and boundary. In the Chretien portion of the
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
Conte del Graal, Perceval discovers the Castle in av
valley, wherein it is well and beautifully situated, having
a four-square tower, with a principal hall and a bridge
leading up to the chief entrance. In some of the other
legends the asylum is so withdrawn that it is neither
named nor described. The Early History of Merlin
speaks of it not less simply as the place where they
had the Holy Vessel in keeping. According to the
Didot Perceval, it is the house of the Rich King
Fisherman ; it is situated in a valley ; it has a tower, and
is approached by a bridge. It might be a tower merely,
for the description is not less vague than many accounts
of the Cup. One of the late Merlin texts says merely
that the Holy Vessel is in the West — that is, in the Land
of Vortigern, or that it abides in Northumbria. Another
says that the Castle is Corbenic ; but though we hear a
good deal concerning it, there is no description whatever.
The section of the Conte del Graal which is refer-
able to Gautier de Doulens says that it is situated on a
causeway tormented by the sea. The building is of vast
extent and is inhabited by a great folk. We hear of its
ceiling, emblazoned with gold and embroidered with
silver stars, of its tables of precious metal, its images and
the rich gems which enlighten it. In a word, we are
already in the region of imaginative development and
adornment, but it is all mere decoration which carries
with it no meaning beyond the heavy tokens of splen-
dour. Manessier furnishes no special account, and Ger-
bert, who has other affairs at heart than solicitude about
a material building or desire to exalt it into allegory,
leaves it unsketched entirely.
The Book of the Holy Graal is the only French text
which contains in a methodical account the building
of the Holy House. The first wardens have passed
from the land of the living, and Alain le Gros is the
keeper of the Blessed Vessel. The actual builder is a
certain converted king of Terre Foraine, and there is a
covenant between him and Alain, one condition of which
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
is that the Graal shall remain in his kingdom. The
Castle on its completion is given the mystic name of
Corbenic, in obedience to an inscription which is found
blazoned on one of the entrance gates. The name is
said to signify the Treasury of the Holy Vessel. The
Graal is placed in a fair chamber of the Castle, as if on
an altar of repose, but, all his munificence notwithstand-
ing and all the sacramental visions which he sees in the
Holy Place, beating of birds' wings and chanting of
innumerable voices, the king is visited speedily for his
mere presence and receives his death-wound at the very
altar : it is the judgment of the sanctuary on those who
desecrate the sanctuary by carrying, however unwittingly,
an unhallowed past therein, and it recalls the traditional
conclusion of the Cabiric Mysteries, wherein the can-
didate was destroyed by the gods. Setting aside an
analogy on which I am by no means insisting, the event
was the beginning of those wonders which earned for
Castle Corbenic the name of the Palace Adventurous,
because no one could enter therein, and no one could
sleep, its lawful people excepted, without death over-
taking them, or some other grievous penalty.
The prose Lancelot is in near correspondence with
Chretien, representing the Castle as situated at the far
end of a great valley, with water encircling it. On
another occasion it is named rather than described, and
visited but not expounded, but we learn that it is situated
in a town which has many dwellers therein. In the Quest
of Galahad it is a rich and fair building, with a postern
opening towards the sea, and this was guarded by lions,
between which a man might pass only if he carried the
arms of faith, since the sword availed nothing and there
was no protection in harness. For the visitor who was
expected or tolerated, it would seem that all doors stood
open, except the door of the sanctuary. But this would
unclose of itself ; the light would issue from within ; the
silver table would be seen ; and thereon the Holy Vessel,
covered with drapery of samite. There also on a day
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
might be celebrated, with becoming solemnity, the Great
Mass of the Supersanctified, and this even in the pres-
ence of those who were not clean in their past, so only
that they had put away their sin when they entered on
the Quest. It was thus beheld by Lancelot, though he
lay as one dead afterwards, because of his intrusion. So
also the welcome guest had reason to know that the
court of King Pelles held a great fellowship in the town
of Corbenic. But there were other visitors at times and
seasons who saw little of all this royalty, like Hector
de Marys, who — brother as he was to my lord Sir
Lancelot — found the doors all barred against him and
no warden to open, long as he hailed thereat.
The most decorative of all the accounts is, however,
in the Longer Prose Perceval, where the Castle is \j
reached by means of three bridges, which are horrible
to cross. Three great waters run below them, the first
bridge being a bow-shot in length and not more than a
foot in width. This is the Bridge of the Eel ; but it
proves wide and a fair thorough-way in the act of cross-
ing. The second bridge is of ice, feeble and thin, and
it is arched high above the water. This is transformed
on passing into the richest and strangest ever seen, and
its abutments are full of images. The third and last
bridge stands on columns of marble. Beyond it there
is a sculptured gate, giving upon a flight of steps, which
leads to a spacious hall painted with figures in gold.
When Perceval visited the Castle a second time he found
it encompassed by a river, which came from the Earthly V
Paradise and proceeded through the forest beyond as far
as the hold of a hermit, where it found peace in the
earth. To the Castle itself there were three names
attributed : the Castle of Eden, the Castle of Joy
and the Castle of Souls. In conclusion as to this
matter, the location, in fine, is Corbenic — not as the
unvaried name, but as that which may be called the
accepted, representing the Temple at its highest, and
corresponding in French romance to Montsalvatch in
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
German — which our late redaction of the Book of the
Holy Graal mentions specifically, and which, all doubtful
clouds of mystic adventure notwithstanding, looms almost
as a landmark in the Lancelot and the Quesf of Galahad.
I must speak very lightly of the German cycle,
because, through all these branches, it is understood
that I shall deal with it again. In the Parsifal and
Titurel the Temple is completely spiritualised, so
that it has ceased almost to be a house made with
hands, though the descriptions on the external side
are here and there almost severe in their simplicity.
On that side it has the strength of a feudal fortress,
turret by turret rising. In the master-hall of the
palace there is something of Oriental splendour — carpets
and couches and cushions, marble hearths burning
strange fragrant woods, and a great blazing of lights.
So far the Parsifal of Wolfram, but we must turn
to other texts for the building of the Temple—
which is after another manner than anything told of
Corbenic in the Northern French cycle. The building
was the work of Titurel, the first King of the Graal,
and in answer to his prayers the High Powers of Heaven
prepared the ground -plan of the Holy Place and fur-
nished the raw material. Over the construction itself
the powers of earth toiled by day and the Powers of
Heaven by night. The floor was of pure onyx; at
the summit of the tower there was a ruby surmounted
by a cross of crystal, and carbuncles shone at the
meeting-points of the great arches within. The roof
was of sapphire, and a pictured starry heaven moved
therein in true order.
We are on a different level when we have recourse
to the poem of Heinrich, which presents several anoma-
lies in respect of the literature as a whole. The road
leading to the Graal Castle was one of harsh and
hazardous enterprise — world without end ; but it brought
the questing hero at some far point into a plenteous and
gracious land, where rose the Palace of Desire, looking
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
beautiful exceedingly, with a meadow before it which
was set apart for joust and tournament. A great con-
course of knights and gentlewomen abode in the burg,
and for the Castle itself we are told that there was none
so fair. Though it will be seen that there is nothing
distinctive in this account, as it is here reduced into
summary, the design is among many things strange,
for if it is not the Castle of Souls it is that of a Living
Tomb, as the story concerning it will show at the
proper time.
So did the place of the mysteries, from a dim and
vague allusion, become
" A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth
Far sinking into splendour."
We can scarcely say whether that which had begun on
earth was assumed into the spiritual place, or whether
the powers and virtues from above descended to brood
thereon.
I have left over from this consideration all reference
to another spiritual place, in Sarras on the confines of
Egypt, where the Graal, upon its outward journey,
dwelt for a period, and whither, after generations and
centuries, it also returned for a period. As this was
not the point of its origin, so it was not that of its
rest ; it was a stage in the passage from Salem and a
stage in the transit to heaven. What was meant by
this infidel city, which was yet so strangely consecrated,
is hard to determine, but its consideration belongs to
a later stage. It is too early again to ask what are the
implicits of the great prose Perceval when it identi-
fies the Castle of the Graal with the Earthly Paradise
and the Place of Souls ; but we may note it as a sign
of intention, and we shall meet with it in another con-
nection where no one has thought to look for it.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
VII
THE KEEPERS OF THE HALLOWS
Such was the Abode of the Hallows ; and those who
dwelt therein, the succession of Graal Keepers, belong to
that Order which we should expect in such precincts.
It should be noted that in the poem of Chretien the
Keeper is called the Fisher King, but his other name
and his lineage are not disclosed. It is, however, the
beginning only of a very long story, and though it is
difficult to say how the poet would have carried it to its
term, personally I do not question that he would have
borne no different witness to the rest of the Graal cycle
in Northern French. By this, without exception, Joseph
of Arimathaea is the first guardian of the Sacred Vessel,
but either he passes from the scene before it has found
a sanctuary or he assumes a secondary position in his
son's favour. According to the metrical romance of
De Borron and the Lesser Chronicles generally, he was
succeeded by his son-in-law, Brons ; but according to
the Greater Chronicles, as I have termed them, he
was succeeded by his own son, the second Joseph,
who is unknown to the other cycle. The Lesser
Chronicles bridge the centuries between that generation
which saw the Ascension of Christ and that which was
to behold the Flower of Chivalry in Arthur, by means of
a single keeper, who was to remain on earth until he had
seen his grandson, Perceval, and had remitted into his
hands the secrets and Hallows of which he had been in
charge so long. Perceval is the third who counts in the
line of election to complete the human trinity of Graal
guardians, reflecting, after their own mystic manner, those
Three who bear witness in heaven, namely, the Divine
Trinity. To accomplish the hero's geniture, Alain, the
son of Brons, although he had accepted celibacy, married
in some undeclared manner, and it was as his issue that
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
Perceval was born in the fulness of the adventurous times.
For the Early History of Merlin the Keepers are those
who have the Holy Vessel, and the reticence in this case
may seem like that of Chretien, but it is not so exactly,
because the prose romance of Merlin follows directly
from the metrical romance of Joseph. We infer further
that the promise of union with the Keepers is like la joie
perdurable.
Gautier's continuation of the Conte del Graal offers
no materials for the identification of the Fisher King,
but the variants or interpolated passages in the Mont-
pellier MS. follow the Lesser Chronicles, representing
him as the father of Alain le Gros who married Enigea,
the sister of Joseph. Manessier and Gerbert, on the
other hand, reflect the Greater Chronicles, and apparently
some early draft of the Book of the Holy Graal, for they
know nothing concerning the younger Joseph.
From one point of view, the succession, in respect
of the Greater Chronicles, involves fewer difficulties,
because it exhibits a rudimentary sense of chronology
and develops in consequence a long line of successive
custodians. They are, however, quite shadowy, and
exist only to bridge the gulf of time in the order
following: (i) Joseph of Arimathasa and Joseph II.;
(2) Alain, the son of Brons ; (3) Eminadap, the son
of Joshua, who was himself a brother of Alain; (4)
Carceloys; (5) Manuiel ; (6) Lambor : the last four
were kings, holding from Calafas of Terre Foraine,
called Alphasan in baptism ; (7) the King Pelles.
So far as regards the Book of the Holy Graal, and it
is difficult to say what version or prototype of this
text was before the authors of the Vulgate and Huth
Merlin, but whatever it was they seem to have drawn
from the same source. The Graal Castle, as we have
seen, is Corbenic ; it is situated in the realm of Listenoys,
and the Keeper is King Pelles. As much and no more
may be said concerning the prose Lancelot. Enumera-
tions of this kind serve very little purpose, and I will
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
speak, therefore, only of the alternative keepers who
were in evidence during the days of quest. On the one
side, there is Brons, to whom succeeded Perceval at the
close of a life of search ; on the other, there is King
Pelles, of the Castle Corbenic, whose daughter, Helayne,
gave Galahad as issue to Lancelot, himself the lineal
descendant of the king reigning at Sarras in the days
of Joseph of Arimathaea and the first flight of the Graal.
Galahad was the last Keeper recognised by this cycle,
except in the Longer Prose Perceval, and he seems to
have been appointed only for the purpose of removing
the Vessel. It was : Ite, missa esty and est consummatum,
when he died and rose to the stars. As the Longer
Prose Perceval is extra-lineal and thus stands by itself,
though its antecedents and certain characteristics have
involved its inclusion among the Greater Chronicles, I
will say of it only in the present place that the King's
title is that adopted by Chretien, or the Rich King
Fisherman, and that his name is not otherwise declared.
His successor is Perceval, but he enters into the secret
royalty after an interregnum only, and his stewardship
also is with a view to the withdrawal of the mystery.
As regards the German cycle, which will be dealt with
elsewhere, the succession of Graal Keepers are TitureJ,
Frimutel and Amfortas, to whom succeeds Perceval.
Titurel at the beginning was a holy hero of earthly
chivalry, to whom a divine voice brought the strange
tidings that he had been elected to guard the Holy
Graal on Mont Salvatch. His progenitor was a man
of Cappadocia who was attached to the Emperor
Vespasian, and received for his services a grant of land
in southern France.
The hereditary stewardship of the Holy Graal was
the most secret of all mysteries, and never initiated
any one outside the predestined family. There is seclu-
sion in all cases, but that of the Brons keepership is
greater beyond comparison than that of Alain and his
successors. One explanation of this may be sought in
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
the simple fact that, as regards the first case, several
intermediate texts are or may be wanting, and that
transparently. This is true so far as it goes, but in
the most proximate pre-Arthurian period, and in the
time of the king, we find still the same concealment,
though it is not quite so unvaried in the records of the
Conte del Graal as it is in the Early History of Merlin
and in the Didot Perceval. The comparative position
seems as another line of demarcation between the
Lesser and Greater Chronicles, but always on the
understanding that the allocation of the Longer Prose
Perceval to the second series, though it cannot be
placed otherwise, and apart especially, is not fully satis-
factory in the nature of things. Speaking generally,
the distinctions between the two branches will be appre-
ciated most clearly by a comparison between the Early
History of Merlin and the later Vulgate and Huth
texts. The sanctuary is shrouded in the first, and
we know only that those who have the Sacred Vessel
are somewhere in Northumbria. In the second, the
keeper, King Pelles, is in continual evidence. He is
also a king in warfare, and it is by no means certain
that he is always on the side of the over-lord Arthur.
It would be easy to extend this section very much
further than I purpose doing, in view of all that is
to follow ; my intention here is a schedule, or this
mainly ; and the specific summary is as follows. There
are two prototypes of the Early History versions, and
they are represented, firstly, by the original draft of
De Borron's metrical romance, which is much earlier
than any other historical account ; they are represented,
secondly, by the speculative prototype of the Book of
the Holy Graal. About this book there are two things
certain : (a) that it is very much later — or at least
that it is later certainly — than the first recension or
transcript of the book which in some undeclared manner
had come into the hands of Robert de Borron ; (£) that
it is a good deal earlier than the Quest of Galahad as we
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
know it, which involves also an antecedence in some form
of the prose Lancelot and the Later Histories of Merlin.
We are left therefore with two claims which appear
to be at the root of the Mystery of the Holy Graal,
as it is manifested in the French literature of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries : these are the claim of an
Eucharistic formula, the validity and efficacy of which
transcended the words of institution known by the
official Church, and the claim of a priesthood which
did not draw from the official apostolate, though it
did not question its authority. These two are one
probably in their essence, and it is out of these re-
spectively that we come to understand why Perceval is
withdrawn into the innermost seclusion by the Lesser
Chronicles, and why in the Greater Chronicles Galahad
is assumed into heaven — both carrying their warrants.
VIII
THE PAGEANTS IN THE QUESTS
The presence of the Holy Vessel signified the Divine
Presence. The Life of Life had remained in the Pre-
cious Blood. The Voice of the Angel of Great Counsel,
the Voice of the Son and the Voice of the Holy Spirit
abode therein, or spoke as if from behind it. The Pres-
ence was sacramental, but the Presence was also real,
and through the soul it was one which sustained the body
itself at need. So far as regards the Lesser Chronicles,
and in those which I call Greater, there was a reservation
which continued through centuries, an arch-natural Mass
— said from time to time and not, as we may suppose,
daily — an unfailing ministry to body and soul alike. In
a word, the Last Supper was maintained for ever and ever.
It was the sacramental side of the eternal festival of the
followers of Bran, and those who say that the roots of
the mystery are in folk-lore say only the most negligible
part of the truth concerning it ; for if I accomplish by a
138
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
secret science the transmutation of lead into gold, it will
be useless for any scholarship of science to depose that
the important fact is the lead. The latter is the ante-
cedent, and as such is, of course, indispensable, but the
great fact is the conversion ; and I say the same of the
Graal literature.
On this and all other considerations, it will be under-
stood that the Mystic Castle was a place of the highest
reverence, and that all things concerning the Sacred
Vessel were done with ceremonial solemnity, following
a prescribed order. In this way it comes about that all
the quests present the pageant of the Graal on its mani-
festation within the hall and the shrine of the Castle.
There are instances in which it is exceedingly simple,
and others in which it is ornate. It is the former in the
Lesser Chronicles, and demands scarcely the express
name of a pageant ; in the Greater Chronicles it is de-
corative, and this term will apply to some of the mani-
festations which are described in the Conte del Graal.
The section which is referable to Chretien offers, how-
ever, nothing to detain us. The procession enters the
hall in single file, and consists in succession of a page,
or squire, who carries the mysterious Sword which will
break in one danger only, of another squire who bears
the Sacred Lance from which the blood issues, and then
of two squires together, each supporting a ten-branched
candlestick. Between these there walks the gentle and
beautiful maiden who lifts up the Holy Graal in her two
hands ; she is followed by another maiden, who carries
the Silver Dish. The procession passes twice before the
couch on which the King of the Castle reclines, and it
is to be noticed that whatever efficacy and wonder may
reside in the objects which are manifested thus, the office
of the bearers is as purely ceremonial as that of the
acolytes and thurifers at any High Mass in the world.
When the questing knight pays his first visit in the
Didot Perceval, the offices are transposed partially and
the Sword is missing from the pageant. He who up-
139
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
raises the Lance enters in the prescribed manner, but he
carries it with both hands and is followed by a maiden
with two silver plates and a napkin on her arm, while the
vessel containing the Precious Blood of our Saviour, as if
it were a phial or reliquary, is in the charge of a second
squire. On the occasion of the later visit, it is said, still
more tersely, that the Graal and the other venerable relics
come out from a chamber beyond, but we do not learn
who carries them. It is a characteristic of all the versions
that, even in telling the same story, it is done always
with respect to a certain genius of difference and a variant
intervening in the text. Gautier de Doulens recounts in
two versions the visit of Gawain to the Graal Castle,
in the more important case under circumstances of unex-
plained mystery, for no one was less on the quest. This is
comparable to the reception of a neophyte who is neither in-
troduced nor prepared, but is mistaken at first for another.
The pageant is also dismembered, for the Dish does not
appear, the Hallow of the Broken Sword is placed upon
the breast of a dead body, which lies on a rich bier.
As if it were a subsidiary Hallow, a stately clerk carries
an enormous cross of jewelled silver, and the only
procession described is of canons in silken copes, who
celebrate the office of the dead amidst thuribles and
golden candlesticks. The Graal itself does not appear
till the supper is served in the hall, but it is held by no
visible hand and no other sacred object is seen in con-
nection therewith. At a later stage of the episode, the
Lance manifests and the blood which distils from its
point is received, as we have seen, in a silver cup ; the
Broken Sword, in fine, reappears at the close ; it is a very
curious and piecemeal pageant. When Perceval revisits
the Castle, the account of Gautier is in better conformity
with what may be termed the conventional or authorised
ceremonial type.
Passing to this point at the term of the continua-
tion by Gautier de Doulens, there is again a very simple
pageant, in which the Graal comes first — a Holy and
140
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
Glorious Vessel — under the charge of a maiden, who
issues from the secret chamber and passes before the
royal table, carrying the Hallow exalted. There follows
a second maiden, than whom none is fairer, clothed in
white drapery, and bearing the Lance from which flows
the mysterious blood. In fine, there enters the squire
exposing a naked sword broken in the middle thereof.
It is at this point that, abruptly enough, the continuation
reaches its term and is taken up by Manessier, who
causes the Graal and the Lance to pass for a second
time before the King and his guest, together with the
nobie Silver Dish, which is carried by a third maiden —
a procession of vestals only, seeing that the work of the
Sword — which has been partly resoldered by Perceval-
has no longer its place in the pageant. When the
questing hero pays his third visit to the Graal Castle,
under the auspices of the same poet, the Lance and
Graal are carried by two maidens, and a squire holds the
Silver Dish, enveloped in his rich amice of red samite.
The sacred objects pass three times, and return as they
issued into the secret chamber, the mystery of which
is never disclosed fully by the makers of this romance.
In fine, when Perceval is crowned — and this is his fourth
visit — a gentle maiden exalts the Holy Vessel, the Lance
is borne by a squire, while another maiden holds the
Silver Dish. It will be seen that on each occasion there
is some variation in the offices, as if these were deter-
mined by accident. The alternative of Gerbert — which
seems interposed before the partial resoldering of the
sword by Perceval in the Gautier version — some few
verbal modifications notwithstanding, gives the same
account of the Graal procession.
In the prose Lancelot, which prefaces the great and
glorious Quest, the pageant has this characteristic —
that it is preceded invariably by a dove which enters
through a window bearing a golden censer in its beak,
and the palace fills thereupon with the eternal sweetness
of the Paradise which is above. The bird passes through
141
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the hall and from sight into a chamber beyond. Out
of that chamber — as if at a concerted signal — almost as
if the dove had suffered transformation — there issues
the maiden of the Graal, carrying the Precious Vessel.
The manifestation in the prose Lancelot is at first on the
occasion of Gawain's visit, and he sees nothing of the
other Hallows till the Lance at a later stage issues from
the chamber beyond and smites him between the
shoulders. In the middle of the night of terror which
follows this episode, he beholds another pageant preceded
by a choir of voices. Once more the maiden issues from
the hidden chamber carrying the sacred vessel, with
lights and thuribles before her, and the service of the
Graal is performed on a silver table in the middle place
of the hall, but there are no other Hallows. When
Lancelot comes to the Castle — from which event follows
the conception of Galahad — the manifestation of the
Graal is identical ; but because of that which must be
consummated he suffers no infliction, and he does not
therefore behold the avenging Lance. It can be said
scarcely that there is a pageant ; the dove enters and
vanishes ; it passes within the secret chamber that the
maiden in charge of the Vessel may come out therefrom ;
she appears accordingly, bearing the Holy Palladium, a
vessel of gold, " the richest thing that any man hath
lyving." She issues from the secret chamber, and again
she returns therein, but not before Lancelot — also for
that which must follow — is dazzled by her surpassing
beauty.
In the time of the great Quest there are, strictly
speaking, no pageants in the sense of the other romances,
for the Graal is going about. Its apparition at the
Court of King Arthur is heralded by a sunbeam only,
and it is borne by no visible hand. In Corbenic, when
all things draw to the holy marvel of their close, there
is a solemn procession of angels to the secret shrine of
the Graal, two of them bearing wax lights, the third a
cloth, and the last the Sacred Lance, because heaven has
142
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
come down at the removal of that which is meant for
earth no more. In Sarras, at the last scene of all, which
ends the strange, eventful mystery, there is a great
cohort of angels ; but this is the choir above descending
to witness that which must be done in fine below. There
is no passing between intermediate spaces.
In the Longer Prose Perceval two damosels issue
together from a chapel which is attached to the ban-
queting-hall, one of them carrying the most Holy
Graal and the other the Lance, the point of which
distils its blood therein. It is suggested also, but as
if by a dream within a dream, that there are two
angels, bearing two candlesticks of gold filled with
wax lights. The damosels move through the hall and
pass into another chapel; again they come forth, and
it seems then that there are three maidens, with the
figure of a child in the midst of the Holy Graal.
They pass for a third time, and then above the Vessel
there is a Vision of the Crucified King.
In the Parsifal of Wolfram a Squire enters hurriedly
bearing the Lance, which bleeds profusely into his sleeve
— an uncouth and ill-begotten symbol. Two gracious
maidens, wearing chaplets on their heads, follow with
flowing hair ; they bear up golden candlesticks. Two
other women, of whom one is described as a duchess,
carry two stools of ivory, which they place before the
king. Next in order are four maidens having as many
tapers, and four other maidens who sustain between
them an oblong slab of jacinth. There are then two
princesses carrying knivgs of silver, and these also are
preceded by four maidens. The princesses are fol-
lowed by six additional maidens, holding tall glasses
filled with rare perfumes. There is, in fine, the queen
of all, with the Graal in the hands of her, and be-
hind is the squire who carries the Sword of Legend.
When we come at the proper time to see how much
and how little on the surface sense of things follows
from this cumbrous display, we shall turn with the
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
more relief to versions that are less decorative, though
we can understand and excuse also the influence of the
oriental mind reflected in the Parsifal from the proto-
type of Guiot de Provence. Relief at the moment will
come from the poem of Heinrich, though it is the idlest
of all the quests. Here the procession is in two parts.
In the first there is a beautiful youth of highest mien,
holding the Sword in one hand, and followed by cup-
bearers who serve wine at the feast. When this is over
there enter two maidens carrying golden candlesticks ;
behind them come two youths, who lift up the Lance
between them ; they are followed by other two maidens,
in whose charge is a salver of jewelled gold, borne
upon a silken cloth. Behind these there walks the
fairest of women holding the Precious Reliquary of
the Graal, and after her the last maiden of all, whose
hands are empty, whose office is weeping only — a
variation which will be found also in the Montpellier
codex of the Conte del Graal.
IX
THE ENCHANTMENTS OF BRITAIN, THE TIMES
CALLED ADVENTUROUS AND THE WOUND-
ING OF THE KING
The Longer Prose Perceval says that the great and
secret sanctuary gives upon the Earthly Paradise, even
as the visible world may be said to give upon the world
unseen — a comparison which would signify for us — or
at least by a suggestion to the mind — that the Temple
of the Hallows and all its external splendour are the
adornment of the soul which is within. Even apart
from such a reading, we can understand that the manner
of doctrine put forward evasively in story-books by the
Graal literature, was sufficient to make the orthodox
church stand aloof, but vigilant and dubious. We have
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
now to consider how a horror fell upon the Secret House
of God and a subtle work of sorcery on the world which
encompassed it. All texts indifferently of the Northern
French cycles say that, as a consequence of certain events
connected with the Castle of the Graal, there fell an
interdiction upon Logres. In the Lesser Chronicles
it is termed an Enchantment, while in the Greater
Chronicles it is characterised as Adventurous Times,
but the distinctions dissolve into one another ; there
is not less adventure, nor is it less hazardous, in the
texts of enchantment, while in the adventurous texts
the graces and terrors of sorcery abound on every side.
We can therefore consider them together, as aspects
of the same subject which are scarcely so much as
alternative, and, in fact, on the study of the documents
it will be found that the adventurous times are almost
too vague by themselves to admit of being specified
separately. As regards the enchantments, they are a
consequence which works outward from within — that
is to say, directly or indirectly, something which has
transpired within is responsible for the inhibition with-
out. The enchantments are the result of an evil which
has fallen on the keeper for the time being of the
Holy Graal. They are the exteriorised sorrow of the
king. The action is, however, reciprocal, for in some
instances that sorrow has reached him by an intrusion
of the external order, though in certain other cases
it has arisen in his own house or in his own person.
It remains that as enchantment fell upon Merlin, so
also it has fallen about the Secret House and has
entered into the Holy of Holies. Now, the places of
enchantment are also places of sadness, and the nature
of the horror within, abiding as a certain cloud upon
the sanctuary, is described after several manners. In
one story, the flesh, which at no time profits anything,
has smitten deeply into the life of the Keeper, who
has been a victim of earthly passion. In another, he
is unable to die till he has seen the last scion of his
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
house, and because of the protraction of the centuries,
he is suffering, in the meantime, the heavy burden of
his great age. He has alternatively received a dolorous
stroke, reacting on him from the person of one of his
relatives ; and as a final explanation he is afflicted by
the failure of a knight to ask the conventional question,
which is at once vital and mystic. These things are
reflected upon the order without, sometimes, as it would
seem, only in the immediate neighbourhood of the Castle ;
more generally through the whole of Logres ; while in
rare instances the world itself is involved, at least by
imputation.
The Perceval Quests turn entirely on the asking of
that question which I have specified in the previous
enumeration, and the pivot of the question itself is
the failure to perform what is expected in this respect —
namely, to ask and to receive. In the Chretien section
of the Conte del Graal the explanation of the king's
sickness is that he was wounded by a spear in battle
and hence is carried by four sergeants because he has
no strength in his bones. In the Didot Perceval Brons,
the Rich Fisherman, is said to be in great infir-
mity, an old man and full of maladies, nor will his
health be restored until the office of the question has
been fulfilled in all perfection. But this is not ordinary
old age ; rather — as I have just intimated — it is the
oppression of many centuries. It is clear, however, that
Brons was not suffering from any curse or enchantment ;
he cannot depart from this life until he has communi-
cated to Perceval the secret words pronounced at the
sacrament of the Graal, which he himself learned from
Joseph. This and the instruction which will follow
the question asked by the hero shall put a period to
the enchantments of Britain. There is a failure in the
first instance, as in the poem of Chretien, and the Quest
in the Conte del Graal is to some extent assumed by
Gawain, who visits the Graal Castle in the continuation
of Gautier ; he does ask, and thereupon the king promises
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Mystertes of the Holy Graal
him that, subject to one other condition, he shall hear
the great story of the Broken Sword and of the woe
which it brought upon the kingdom of Logres — but
Gawain fails and falls asleep. The failure of Perceval has
worked the destruction of kingdoms, which may mean
certain petty principalities of Britain passing under this
name — otherwise they cannot have been of this world,
as the prophecy does not come to pass here. On the
occasion of Perceval's second visit, the king is seated
on a couch as before, and the discourse is not closed in
the section of Gautier. The conclusion of Manessier
recounts how the Broken Sword dealt that stroke
which, prior to the voided question, has destroyed
the realm of Logres and all the surrounding country.
The unfinished inquiry of Gawain, before he fell into
slumber, restored verdure to the land about the Graal
Castle and the waters found their course. It was
not, however, the keeper but his brother who received
the Dolorous Stroke, being slain treacherously in a
battle. The sword, which broke in the act, was placed
upon the bier when the body was brought to the
Castle ; it was taken up incautiously by the king and
in some undeclared manner it wounded him in both
thighs ; this wound could not be healed till the death
of his brother was avenged. For these events the late
prologue to the Conte del Graal substitutes a desola-
tion which fell upon Logres prior to the coming of King
Arthur. There were certain maidens who kept the
wells and ministered refreshment to travellers out of
golden cups. So admirable as was this custom, an evil
king despoiled the maidens and scattered them, after
which the service ceased. The elements of the prologue
stand apart from the rest of the literature, like an
allegory in another tongue ; and though it is very curious
in itself, it connects with nothing which follows in the
texts that it is supposed to introduce.
The Book of the Holy Graal, like the metrical romance
of De Borron, antecedes the period alike of enchantments
H7
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and quests ; but as, in its present form, it is later in fact
than the chronicles which it is supposed to precede, so, as
a part of its warrants, it forestalls many of their charac-
teristics by a kind of spurious prophecy. It tells how
the younger Joseph, the second keeper of the Graal, was
smitten in the thighs by an angel for aiding certain
people who did not embrace Christianity, and it testifies
that the avenging spear with which the wounds were
inflicted will be heard of again at the beginning of those
marvels that shall occur in the land of Britain. In this
manner it foreshadows the particular Dolorous Stroke
of which we have a full account in the Huth Merlin
and all the sorrowful adventures which follow therein.
These are destined to continue for twenty-two years,
corresponding to the twenty-two days during which the
head of the Lance was embedded in the flesh of Joseph.
The Vulgate Merlin has nothing to say concerning
the enchantments of Britain, except that the prophet's
skill and discretion were gifts vouchsafed by God so
that he might accomplish the adventures of the Seynt
Graal. That it was the rumour of the Sacred Vessel
which inaugurated the time of adventure is clear from
this passage, as it is also from the Huth Merlin,
which speaks of a prophecy written by the enchanter
on parchment and concerned with those marvels which
would characterise the Quest, encompassing in fine the
destruction of the marvellous lion — that is to say, the
overthrow of King Arthur. The implicits of this state-
ment are one crux of the Merlin cycle. It is also, as
I have intimated, to the Huth Merlin that we owe
our acquaintance with the beautiful story of Balyn and
Balan, the two brethren born in Northumberland, who
were good knights, according to Malory. Balyn was
destined to inflict the Dolorous Stroke, which during
the allotted period of twenty-two years would cause
dire distress throughout three kingdoms, for by this
stroke he would pierce the most holy man in the world,
and inaugurate the marvels of the Graal in Great Britain.
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
There can be no doubt that the Warden of the Sacred
Vessel is here the intended victim, and that the stroke
is actually given in the Graal Castle, with the hallowed
spear of the legend. Balyn himself nearly loses his life
in the cataclysm which follows, and is informed by
Merlin that he has deserved the hatred of the whole
world, the obvious reason being that he has desecrated
the sanctuary. The recipient of the wound is, however,
said to be King Pellehan, who is the brother of King
Pelles the Keeper. In any chronological tabulation this
event would most likely precede the visit of Gawain to
the Graal Castle and indubitably the first arrival of
Lancelot therein. These occurrences are related in the
prose Lancelot^ but in this romance the Keeper of the
Sacred Vessel is, as I have said, King Pelles, and he is
not wounded. Pellehan reappears in the Quest of Galahad
not only as the Maimed King, but as he who bears the
title of the Rich Fisher, which is reserved to the royalty
of the Graal wardens. It will be seen, therefore, that
a certain confusion has arisen, owing to continuous
editing, and it may follow that there was originally but
one King in the Castle, that his name was Pelles, that
he was wounded by the Dolorous Stroke, and was
destined to be healed by Galahad at the term of the
Quest. As it is, there is actually a dual healing — that
of the King Pellehan and that of another personage
whose sin dates back to the first times of the legend,
being one of unprepared intrusion into the most secret
mysteries of the Graal. In the Quest of Galahad
the confusion which I have noticed is made greater by
the story of Sir Perceval's sister concerning the maiming
of King Pelles, who found the ship of Solomon towards
the coast of Ireland. He entered therein and drew the
sword of David about half-way from its scabbard. In
punishment of this rashness a spear smote him through
both thighs, and never since might he be healed, says
she, "to fore we come to hym." None of this takes
place actually, but it goes to show that the original
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intention of the story was the intention of the Perceval
quests — namely, to wound the keeper of the Graal.
Speaking otherwise of this great romance, the whole
process of the Quest is lifted into a high spiritual region,
the implicits of which will provide us at a later stage
with one key of the mystery.
In the Longer Prose Perceval it is said that there
shall be no rest in the land till the Graai has been
achieved. But here the horror of the house was the
failure of Perceval to ask that question the simplicity of
which is the seal of the whole enigma. As a con-
sequence, the shepherd has been smitten and the sheep
have been scattered. Those who ministered in the Castle
were sent out by the general fatality beyond the sacred
precincts, for no other reason apparently than to act as
witnesses of the woe abroad before the face of the world ;
and so, therefore, in place of ceremonial pageants within,
there are strange processions without.
In the German cycle, the adequate consideration of
which must be referred as before to a later stage, the
Parsifal of Wolfram sets a blot on the scutcheon by
showing that sin entered the sanctuary, and in this, as in
other respects, the story is set apart from all else in the
general pageant of the literature. On the other hand,
the poem of Heinrich, though its root-matter is almost
out of knowledge, conforms, as it does usually, to the
more normal tradition in points of detail, saying that the
doom of the king was the outcome of war between
brothers. With this, in other connections and a far other
sense, we have some analogy in the Longer Prose Perceval.
I believe that the implicits of the Graal keepers must
rank among the most important of those which remain
for consideration in their place. While they are con-
nected more especially with the headship in the persons
of the successive Wardens, there are also subsidiary
matters which will arise in their proper order. Woe has
fallen on the Wardens, though, speaking symbolically,
they abide in the place of life. Not only is the here-
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
ditary custodian of the secrets that person in most of the
romances on whom comes the symbolic grief, but he is
dependent peculiarly on help expected from without, and
although his sustenance is within his healing is beyond
the sanctuary. Even such a sinner as Gawain can bring
him a partial consolation. He receives a nondescript
savage like Perceval, as he is depicted in the more
primitive stories, within the fold of election, for doing
something after a clownish failure which any child might
have been expected to perform at once. All this is so
out of reason on the surface that a meaning in conceal-
ment seems inevitable. Its investigation is reserved of
necessity, but as something consistent with the subject
down the first vistas of which we are looking only, it
may be said, as the characteristic of every initiation, that
the candidate does not ask questions ; it is he who is
catechised and must answer. One key from one point of
view might again be the counsel : Ask, and ye shall
receive. But the Graal quester is to bestow before he
receives. The suggestion seems that if we are dealing
with a rite which follows a certain procedure, it is one
which works rather the reverse way, so far as other
mysteries are concerned. That rite has been going on
for generations, inviting and accepting no candidate,
for it is perpetuated by hereditary transmission, though
its treasury has been a heritage of woe. There is no
symbolical object in all the literature of romance to
compare with the secret guardianship, whether the
keeper is wounded for his own, or another's, and even
for our transgressions ; whether also the consideration of
his mystery arises from the texts themselves or from
suggestions belonging thereto and admitted from a very
high standpoint. No one could find the Castle, or come
into the presence of the king, except by a special warrant
and sometimes by a congenital election. The Castle was
hidden from the world, like the analogous House of the
Holy Ghost in the Rosicrucian Mystery, and he who
entered therein had somehow to awaken the oracle. The
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
hidden life of the keepers passed in the Castle, but not in
the visionary rapture of those who go into Avalon and
other isles of the blessed. Now, there are two palmary
mysteries connected with two divisions of the Chronicles
of Quest — one is the silence of Perceval and the other is
the conception of Galahad. By the way of anticipation
something more will be said of the first in the next section.
X
THE SUPPRESSED WORD AND THE
MYSTIC QUESTION
It is agreed that the essential and predominant char-
acteristic of the Perceval literature is the asking and
answering of a question which bears on its surface every
aspect of triviality, but is yet the pivot on which the
whole circle of these romances may be said to revolve.
On the other hand, the question is absent from the
Galahad story, and in place of it we have a stately
pageant of chivalry moving through the world of Logres
to find the high mystery of sanctity. But that finding
is destined only to dismember the Arthurian empire and
to pass, in fine, leaving no trace behind it, except the
sporadic vision of a rejected knight, which is mentioned
but not described, and occurs under circumstances that
justify grave doubts as to its existence in the original
texts.
Now, the entire critical literature of the Graal may be
searched in vain for any serious explanation as to the
actuating motive, in or out of folk-lore, concerning the
Graal question. On the part of the folk-lore authorities
there have been naturally attempts to refer it to some-
thing antecedent within the scope of their subject, but
the analogies have been no analogies, and as much ex-
travagance has resulted as we have yet heard of in the
connection which some scholars have vaguely termed
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
mysticism. The symbolical and sacramental value of
the Graal Quest, outside all issues in folk-lore, is from
my standpoint paramount, as it is this indeed without any
reference to the opinions which are founded in folk-lore
or to the speculations thereout arising ; and the fact
remains that the palmary importance of the mystic
question lapses with the pre-eminence of the Perceval
Quest. Initiation, like folk-lore, knows many offices of
silence but few of asking ; and after many researches I
conclude — or at least tentatively — that in this respect the
Graal romances stand practically alone. It is therefore
useful to know that it is not the highest term of the
literature.
In the Conte del Graal of Chretien, the law and
order of the Quest is that Perceval shall ask the meaning
of those wonders which he sees in the pageant at the
Castle of the Quest. The references are many in the
poem, but they are merely repetitions. Perceval did not
ask (i) how such things came to pass; (2) nor any-
thing whatsoever; (3) he did not dare to ask about the
Graal, qui on en servoit^ because his teacher in chivalry
had cautioned him against idle curiosity and such imper-
tinence, for which reason he reserved his speech. It is
understood that through the oppression of the centuries
the keeper of the Holy Graal is, according to the Didot
Perceval, in a state of distress, longing for his delayed
release. Before he can go in peace he must pass on
the divine tradition of the Secret Words, but before
he can so transmit them he must be asked a question.
That question is : De quoi li Grans sen. It will per-
form a twofold office, firstly, to heal the king, and,
secondly, to liberate his speech. Perceval reaches the
Castle, but notwithstanding that the voice of one who
was invisible had announced at the Court of King
Arthur, in Perceval's presence and in that of all the
knights, both the nature and effect of the question, he
entreats nothing for fear of offending his host. Hence
he departs in disgrace, and the king remains unhealed.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Within the limits of the Gautier section of the Conte
del Graal there are not less than three versions of the
visit of Gawain to the Graal Castle, representing specific
variations of different manuscripts. Without exercising
any discrimination between them, but rather by a har-
mony of all, it may be said that he does ask concerning
the Lance and Graal, but as he cannot re-solder the sword,
he can learn nothing regarding the Sacred Vessel, or,
if there is a sign of willingness on the part of the
Keeper, he goes to sleep and so escapes the story. The
result is that the enchantment is in part only removed
from the land. When the same poet recounts the second
visit of Perceval, the knight on beholding the Hallows
does not know where to begin, but at length prays that
he may hear the whole truth concerning the Graal, the
Sword and the Lance. The condition of the answer, as
in the case of Gawain, is that he shall re-solder the
Sword, and we have seen already that in this task Per-
ceval is successful partly, but the king's healing does not
seem to be effected, though the path thereof is open,
and the knight has not yet achieved the Quest. The
result on external nature is not stated by Manessier.
At the beginning of the Longer Prose Perceval it
is said that the reticence of the questing Knight at
the Graal Castle caused such mischances in Greater
Britain that all the lands and islands fell into sorrow.
There appeared to be war everywhere, no knight meeting
another in the forest without running on him and slaying
him, if he could. The King Fisherman himself passed
into languishment. The question which ought to have
been asked was : " Unto whom one serveth of the
Graal." Many penances will be ended, it is said, when
he who visits the Graal Castle demands unto whom it
is served ; but this event never comes to pass in the
story. The desire to ask questions seems to have been
rare therein, for Gawain when conversing with a
wandering damsel, who was formerly the bearer of the
Graal, fails to inquire why she carries her arm slung
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Mysteries of the Holy Graal
on her neck in a golden stole, or concerning the rich
pillow whereon her arm reposes. He is told that he
will give no greater heed at the court of King Fisher-
man. The King himself always dwells on the mis-
fortune which overtook him through the failure of
Perceval. When Gawain actually reaches the mystic
Castle, he sees the Graal and the Lance, but he is lost
in a joy of contemplation and he utters no word.
It has been said that there is a question in the
Romance of Galahad, and it might have been added
that there is one in the prose Lancelot; the second
illustrates the first, and we shall find that they are both
mere traces and survivals, as the prologue to the Conte
del Graal has the shadow of the secret words, peculiar
to the cycle of De Borron, when it affirms that the
Graal secret must be never disclosed. I do not think
that, as regards the later instance, I should be justified
in assuming that he who wrote this prologue was in
touch direct with the implicit of the De Borron cycle,
and 1 do think alternatively that if people were disposed
to lay stress on such remanents of the question as I
am citing here, they are likely to find that it will work
rather in a reverse direction. The fact remains that
Lancelot saw the Graal in one episode of the great
story dedicated to him, that he asked the question which
is so important in some other romances, that he asked
it quite naturally — as who would have failed to do ?
—that he was answered also naturally, and that nothing
depended therefrom. He cried in his wonder : " O
Jesu ! what does this mean ? " He was told : " This
is the richest thing in the world." In the Galahad
romance, when he beheld, by the Stone Cross in the
wild, a sudden passage of the Graal and the healing
of a certain knight, it is hinted by some texts that he
ought to have asked something, despite the lesson which
he had in the voiding of things previously ; but he was
so far right on the fact that his imputed omission
carried no consequence.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
The hindrance to the question in the Parsifal is
the same as we have found in Chretien ; at all that
he saw the knight of the Quest was agaze with wonder ;
he thought also that if he refrained from asking he
would be told eventually. That which followed here-
from was sorrow to the host, with continued suffering,
and woe also to the guest. For this silence he is always
represented in the romances as earning reproach and
contumely from persons outside the Castle, but in the
German poem there is no suggestion of an external
enchantment. It is to be noted further that Parsifal
has not received a prefatory warning regarding the
question, as he has in the Didot Perceval.
In Diu Crbne by Heinrich, when the questing knight
has beheld the Reliquary and the Spear, he does the
opposite exactly, for he can no longer contain himself,
and so asks his host, for the sake of God, to tell him
what the marvels mean and who also are the great
company whom he beholds. Even as he speaks, all
present spring from their seats with a loud cry and the
sound of great rejoicing. The host tells them to sit
down again, and then he explains to the knight that he
has seen the Holy Vessel of which he may say nothing,
except that joy and consolation supervene upon his saving
question. Many are liberated from the bondage which
they have endured so long, having little hope of acquit-
tance. There was a time when they trusted in Perceval,
as in one predestined to enter into the knowledge of the
Graal, as if through everlasting portals, but he fell away
like a knight of no spirit who dared and demanded
nothing. Had he done otherwise, he would have
released many from their toil who remain in the
semblance of life and are yet dead. The woe came
about through the strife of kinsmen, " when one brother
smote the other for his land." For this disloyalty the
judgment of God descended upon him and his consan-
guinities, so that doom overtook them all. The living
were expatriated, and the dead, under greater disaster,
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
remained in the shadow of life. To end their woe it was
necessary that a man of their race should seek an explana-
tion of their sad, long-enduring prodigies. It does not
appear that the Graal or the Spear have any connection
with the Passion of Christ, and there is no secret
communicated, for the history of the Sacred Vessel is not
recounted ?
From the consideration of this subject we may come
away therefore, confirmed in our reasonable certainty that
the question with which we have been dealing is unlike
anything in literature. We shall see ultimately how it is
accounted for by expert knowledge of folk-lore — con-
nected or otherwise with quests and vengeance missions
— in Welsh or English literature.
XI
THE HEALING OF THE KING
It came about, therefore, at the end of the Quest, that
the Suppressed Word was at last spoken, that the ques-
tion was asked and answered. There are certain texts
in which the asking and the answering are all that was
required by the hypothesis, and then it was well in the
Secret House of the Wardens. There are other texts,
which connect more directly with folk-lore, in which the
king's healing depended upon a dual office, of which the
first part was the question itself, as a kind of interlocutory
discourse, and then upon a mission of vengeance. It was
fulfilled in either case. The head of the Blessed Bran
does not appear in the symbolism of these branches, but
the head as the sign of the accomplished sacrifice is an
essential, in these branches, of the Quest fulfilled, and
this is the characteristic in chief of the Conte del Graal.
As a Rite of the Observance with Mercy, the question
and its answer were held to be all-sufficient in the Lesser
Chronicles, because the curse on the Keeper is like that
on the Wandering Jew — it is the ages continued hence-
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
forward, and he comes at length to his rest. The
Greater Chronicles offer another pageant of the Quest,
the particulars of which are as follows : ( i ) The Building
of the Ship of the Secret Faith, that at the end of a
certain time it might carry into the far distance the most
valid and efficacious symbols of the Mystery of Faith ;
(2) the healing of a King of the East who is not
to be confused with the Keeper himself, but he dates
ab initio symboli and is doubtless the witness in chief
of the mystery even to the times of the Quest :
concerning him it may be said that he tried to take
the mystery of faith by violence, outside which his
existence is parallel to that of the Keeper Brons, having
been prolonged through the centuries from the first times
of the legend ; (3) the redemption of the Cain of the
legend who slew his brethren ; (4) an intercalatory and
voided wonder concerning the maiming of the Graal
King when he drew the Sword of David.
The particulars in all branches may be collected shortly
as follows : In the Conte del Graal Gautier presents a
certain lifting of the heavy veil of enchantment, so that
the desert becomes the sown, and we are enabled to com-
pare how it was in the dry tree with that which it is
in the green : Winter has passed, so to speak, and the
voice of the turtle is heard again in the land. In
Manessier, the keeper, who has suffered from that
illogical maiming occasioned by the death of his brother,
is healed at the sight of his head who committed the
original act of violence. The whole business is foolish,
and so unutterably. It was necessary, for some reason
that derived probably its roots from folk-lore, for the
king to be smitten in his thighs ; the event comes to pass
under circumstances that are quite and frankly impossible;
and there is also no reason why the wound which was
self-inflicted unconsciously should not have been healed
at once, unless death intervened as the term. Assuming
that Gerbert knew nothing of Manessier's conclusion and
that he regarded the last words of Gautier — in which the
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
Rich Fisher hails Perceval as the Lord of his house — as
the term, in fine, of the story, his own intercalation was
intended to account for the closing along better lines,
and he did not concern himself with any explanation
of the King's wounding. On the contrary, his intention
was to show that the proper demand and reply exercised
their proper office, and that the one thing which re-
mained to complete the whole was for Perceval to re-
deem his past. The poem does not offer a termination
which follows from the text, while that of Manessier,
from any explanatory standpoint, is so much idle baggage.
The Conte del Graal, considered as a Graal story,
is therefore at once imperfect and piecemeal. The
Didot Perceval is by no means entirely satisfactory
as a completion of De Borron's trilogy, but as a
simple term of a quest which is exceedingly simple,
it leaves nothing undone. The Keeper of the Graal,
as we have seen, must communicate his mystery be-
fore he departs hence. The mode of communication
presupposes the arbitrary question which is a pretext for
unveiling the mysteries, and the issue, which is clear from
the beginning, is not clouded subsequently by extraneous
matters. The king is healed — that is to say, he is
relieved of the long burden of the centuries, and he is
enabled to pass in peace. In the Great Prose Quest it
is the hands of Galahad which are the hands of healing.
The Hallow of the ensanguined lance inflicted the wound
from which the unknown king Pellehan suffered through
the whole period during which the Quest was prepared
and achieved. The restoration was accomplished by
Galahad with the blood from the same weapon ; therewith
he anointed the king. It is after this or another manner
that the remedial elements are sometimes in the House
of the Graal, but they must be administered by one who
comes from external places. It may be admitted that, at
least on the surface, both wounding and healing in the
Galahad Quest are a burden to the logical understanding.
For what it is worth — which is little — in other respects,
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
there is on this point a certain consistence in the Conte
del Graal. At the beginning it carries the implicit of
a vengeance legend, and though something is forgotten
in the antecedence by Gautier and something else by
Manessier, as if they had not read fully their precursors,
that is explicated in fine which was implied at first. The
Longer Prose Perceval has a root-difficulty, because there
is no attempt to explain either why the question was
necessary, when all was well with the king, or why —
whether necessary or not — the failure of Perceval should
have caused the Keeper of the Holy Graal to fall into
such languishment that ultimately he died unhealed. For
these are the distinctions, among many, between the
High History and all other Perceval Quests — that it
begins at the middle point of the story and that the
Keeper perishes. Among the correspondences in the
reverse order of these differences is the Quest of Gawain,
according to Diu Crone by Heinrich, where the king
indeed dies coincidently with his release, but this is his
desired liberation from the condition of death in life.
Speaking generally, the death of the wounded keeper
is designed thoughout to make room for his successor.
In the Didot Perceval he is released according to his
yearning, and that almost at once ; in the Conte del
Graal Perceval, far from the Castle, awaits the keeper's
demise, which occurs in the natural course. In the
Parsifal of Wolfram there is a kind of abdication by
Amfortas in favour of the Questing Knight, but the two
abide together, and, as in the Didot Perceval, there is,
in fact, a trinity of keepers. In the Quest of Galahad,
that glorious and saintly knight can be called a keeper
scarcely ; if I may be pardoned the expression, he and his
companions act as the transport agents of the Sacred
Vessel, so far as the term is concerned, though we may
still regard Galahad as the keeper in heaven. We are
not concerned with the healing of King Pellehan, because
he is not the keeper of the Graal, as the text stands,
though we feel that some editor has blundered. I will
1 60
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
leave him therefore with the last word which he might
have addressed to Galahad : Domine, non sum dignus ut
intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum die verbo et sanabitur
corpus meum. I will leave also at this point the mystery
of the healing of the king. For us and for our salvation,
the quests of the Graal are the exteriorised zeal of the
hearts which desire the bread of heaven and a visible sign
that it is more than the daily bread. Such a romance
of sanctity they appear in the story of Galahad, whose
kingdom is not of this world ; he is crowned indeed
at Sarras, but it is contrary to the will of him who
sought only to be dissolved and to be with Christ.
The first term of the other quests sometimes carried
with it a species of kingship, and, as to these, it was
on the king's healing that it was said of his successor :
Long live the King !
XII
THE REMOVAL OF THE HALLOWS
We have now seen that the Rich Fisherman, King and
Warden of the Graal, was healed as the consequence of
the Quest, or that, this failing, a provision was made for
his successor after some other manner. Now, this is
the penultimate stage of the mystery regarded as a whole,
and the one question which still remains to be answered
is — what became of the Graal ? Subject to charac-
teristic variations which are particular to each text, it
will be found — as I have said — that the several romances
follow or forecast one general process, suggesting a pre-
vailing secret intention, and it is for this intention that my
study will have to account. At the moment the external
answer to the problem above propounded, resting on the
evidence of the documents, is an example of variation- —
which tends, however, to one term ; this term is that
either the Holy Graal and the other Hallows of the
Passion were removed altogether or they were takenjjinto
161 L
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
deeper concealment. The specific testimonies are as
follows. After the death of King Fisher, Perceval in-
herits his kingdom — in the Conte del Graal — and he reigns
for seven years. He appoints his successor, who does
not become the Warden of the Hallows, and he passes
himself into the seclusion of a hermitage, where he
remains for ten years, having been ordained a priest. The
Graal follows him, and he is at length assumed into the
joy of Paradise, since which time the Sacred Vessel and
the other precious objects have never been beheld so
openly. As a rider to this, it is added that no doubt
they were taken to heaven, which is an argument from
the unworthiness of the world. In the Didot Perceval
the Knight of the Quest and a certain hermit, who is a
character of importance in the Lesser Chronicles, become
the guardians of the Graal, and the prophet Merlin also
abides with them. Merlin, in fine, goes away, seeking a
deeper seclusion, and neither he nor the Graal are heard
of subsequently. The inference is that the Graal re-
mains in the asylum of the Holy House, under the
charge of its wardens. The Longer Prose Perceval,
after a faithful picture of the Questing Knight in lone-
liness and rapture, surviving all his kindred, says that
a secret voice commanded him to divide the Hallows
among a certain company of hermits, after which a mystic
ship anchors by the Castle, and Perceval, taking his leave
of all those who still remained about him, entered that
vessel and was carried far over the sea, " nor never
thereafter did no earthly man know what became of
him, nor doeth the history speak of him more." In
the Great Prose Quest the most holy companions —
Galahad, Perceval and Bors — are conveyed in the ship
mystic of Solomon to a place in the East, named Sarras ;
the Hallows with which they are charged are the Sacred
Vessel and the Lance, together with the Sword of David,
wherewith Galahad is girded. For a certain allotted
period of days that are sad, consecrated and strange, the
companions watch over the Hallows in the city of Sarras ;
162
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
and then the call comes to Galahad. " There with he
kneled doune to fore the table, and made his prayers,
and thenne sodenly his soule departed to Jhesu Crist and
a grete multitude of angels bare his soule up to Heuen,
that the two felawes myghte wel behold hit. Also the two
felawes sawe come from heven an hand, but they sawe not
the body. And thenne hit cam ryght to the vessel, and
took it and the spere and soo bare hit up to heuen.
Sythen was ther neuer man soo hardy to saye that he had
sene the Sancgreal." In the German cycle, the Parsifal
of Wolfram leaves the Graal where it was always since its
first manifestation, but the Titurel of Albrecht von Scharf-
enberg — a text which is so late that it is excluded
generally from the canon of the literature — narrates the
rise and growth of an evil time, wherein, for its better
protection, Parsifal and the chivalry of the Graal, bear-
ing the Blessed Palladium, go forth from Mont Salvatch
into the far East, where is the kingdom of Prester John,
and there it may remain to this day — most surely in
another kingdom which is not of this world. After
these high memorials it is almost unnecessary to speak
of the Quest in Heinrich, at the term of which the
Graal and the ghostly company dissolve before the eyes
of the Questing Knight, and thenceforth the tongue of
man cannot show forth the mysteries.
Seeing now that the great sacraments do not pass away,
it must follow that in the removal of the Holy Graal,
as it is narrated in the texts, we are in the presence
of another mystery of intention which appears the most
obscure of all. The cloud that dwelt on the sanctuary,
the inhibition which was on the world without, the hurt
almost past healing which overtook the hereditary keeper,
are ample evidence in themselves that evil had entered
into the holy place, despite all the warrants which it held
and all the Graces and Hallows which dwelt therein.
With one curious exception, the Keeper was, in fine,
healed ; the enchantment was also removed ; and the
achievement of the last Warden, at least in some
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
instances, must have been designed, after a certain
manner and within a certain measure, to substitute
a greater glory for the cloud on the secret sanctuary.
All this notwithstanding, the end of the great quests, the
term of the whole mystery, was simply the removal
thereof. It occurs in each romance under different
circumstances, and it was not, as we shall learn more fully,
always of an absolute kind. In the Conte del Graal it is
said — and we have seen previously — that it was taken
away, possibly to heaven ; in the Didot Perceval it was seen
no more ; in the Longer Prose Perceval it was distributed,
so far as we can tell, with the other Hallows, to certain
hermits, and it ceased simply to manifest ; in Wolfram
the whole question is left open in perpetuity, for at the
close of the poem the keeper remains alive ; in the
Titurel of Albrecht von Scharfenberg the Vessel was carried
eastward into the dubious realm of Prester John, and
there apparently it remains ; in the Quest of Galahad it is
assumed by Heaven itself, and the last keeper followed ;
but, in spite of this, the lost recension, as represented,
faithfully or otherwise, by the Welsh Quest, says that
though it was not seen so openly, it was seen once
by Sir Gawain, the least prepared and least warranted of
all the Graal seekers, whose quest, moreover, was for the
most part rather accidental than intended.
Speaking now from the mystic standpoint, the removal
of the Holy Graal has in a certain sense the character-
istics of an obscure vengeance. The destruction of the
external order would appear to have been decreed. The
Graal is carried away and its custodians are translated.
The removal certifies the withdrawal of an object which
we know, mystically speaking, is never taken away,
though it is always hidden from the unworthy. In
respect of its imputed removal, it is taken thither where
it belongs ; it is the same story as that of the Lost Word
in Masonry. It is that which in departing hence draws
after it all that belongs thereto. In other words, it goes
before the cohort of election as the Pillars of Fire
164
Mysteries of the Holy Graal
and Cloud before Israel in the Wilderness. The root
and essence of the matter can be put shortly in these
words : The Graal was not taken away, but it went
to its own place, which is that of every man.
The Galahad Quest closes the canon of the literature.
Other romances have said that the Sacred Vessel was not
seen so openly, or that it was heard of no more, or that
it had passed into concealment, and so forth ; but this
crowning legend carries it into complete transcendence,
amidst appropriate ceremonial, though otherwise it leaves
the Arthurian sacrament sufficiently unfinished. That is
to say, it is still to be communicated for the last time to
the whole world on the return of Arthur. The Graal is
in hiding, like Arthur ; but the Graal is, like Arthur, to
return. Meanwhile, the chivalry of the world is broken,
and the kingdom is destroyed. The master of all chiv-
alry has received in his turn a dolorous stroke and is
removed through a mist of enchantment, under dubious
wardens, to the land of the setting sun, even into an exile
of the ages. But he also is to be, in fine, healed and to
return, though at what time we know not, for centuries
pass as days, within the certain knowledge of Ogier the
Dane. So much as this may perhaps be hazarded on the
point of time, namely, that the King's rendering shall be
when the King's dark barge, sailing westward, like the
lighter craft of Hiawatha, shall meet with the Graal,
which set forth eastward, since the Graal must heal the
King, and these shall meet truly when justice and mercy
kiss. The Graal is not therefore lost, but gone before.
Of such are the mysteries of the Graal, considered in
their manifestation and considered also in their removal.
I have passed through many houses of initiation in
literature, but I know of nothing in suggestion and
allusion to compare with the House of the Graal.
BOOK III
THE EARLY EPOCHS OF THE QUEST
THE ARGUMENT
I. THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE LEGEND IN FOLK-
LORE.— Old Celtic prototypes of the Graal literature — Some
unconsidered specifics of this subject — A position by way of
alternative — Elements of the whole argument — The Cauldron
of the Dagda — The Cauldron of Bendigeid Vran — Quests
which are not of the Graal — Druidic Mysteries — After what
manner these mysteries and their doctrine dissolved into the
light of Christianity — A catholic conclusion regarding the claims
of Folk-Lore — The matter which is placed in our hands.
II. THE WELSH PERCEVAL. — Presence of early elements
in a late form — Value as a non-Graal Quest — The root-matter
of the story — Comparison with the Graal Quests — Analogies
with the Graal Hallows — The Vengeance Legend — Conclusion
as to this text. III. THE ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCE
OF SYR PERCYVELLE. — The archaic elements of this Quest
and its claims in comparison with those of the Welsh Peredur
—The story in outline — Analogies in the Italian Carduino
—Conclusion as to this text and generally as to the Proto-
Perceval Quest before the Holy Graal arose on the horizon of
literature. IV. THE CONTE DEL GRAAL and in the first
place — (A) Preliminary to the whole subject — (5) Concern-
ing the poetic romance of Chretien de Troyes — The state
of the story as one of transition from the folk-tale to the
true romance of the Graal — Its connections with the mystic
side of the legend — The silence of Perceval — The exile and
sorrows of the Knight — The speculative intentions of Chretien
169
"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
— (C) The continuation of Gautier — The development of
PercevaFs story — The point to which it is taken — The his-
torical texts of the Graal which intervened between Chretien
and Gautier — The unfinished duest in Gautier — (Z)) The con-
clusion according to Manessier — Intervention of the Vengeance
Legend — Elements of Graal history in this conclusion, and
inferences therefrom — The ordination of Perceval as a specific
departure from tradition — The assumption of the Hallows —
(£) The alternative conclusion ofGerbert — The dual failure of
Perceval — His penitence and expiation — The conventional in-
tention of his marriage — His later and higher intention — An
adornment of a spiritual marriage — The Knight of the Swan —
An analogy with Alain le Gros — The process of departure from
Folk-lore in the Conte del Graal — Absence of the Vengeance
Legend in Gerbert — Further consideration of the Prologue to the
whole story — (F) In which Sir Gawain is considered briefly
as a Companion of the Holy Quest — Modern speculations
and inferences as to the primary claim of this hero — The
light upon these which can be gathered from the poem of
Heinrich — The judgment of the prose Lancelot and the
duest of Galahad — Sir Gawain in the story of Chretien —
The burden of this duest in Gautier — His recognition that
the courtly Knight was predestined at least to some measure
of success — How the false experiment is not repeated by
Manessier or Gerbert — An Advance Note on Gawain in the
Parsifal of Wolfram — The Knight of Courtesy in the Longer
Prose Perceval.
170
BOOK III
THE EARLY EPOCHS OF THE QUEST
I
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE LEGEND IN
FOLK-LORE
THE beginnings of literature are like the beginnings of
life — questions of antecedents which are past finding
out, and perhaps they do not signify vitally on either
side, because the keys of all mysteries are to be sought
in the comprehension of their term rather than in their
initial stages. Modern scholarship lays great and almost
exclusive stress on the old Celtic antecedents of the
Graal literature, and on certain Welsh and other proto-
types of the Perceval Quest in which the Sacred Vessel
does not appear at all. As regards these affiliations,
whether Welsh, English or Irish, I do not think that
sufficient allowance has been made for the following
facts : (a} That every archaic fiction and every legend
depends, as already suggested, from prior legend and
fiction ; (£) that the antecedents are both explicit and
implicit, intentional or unconscious, just as in these days
we have wilful and undesigned imitation ; (c) that the
persistence of legends is by the way of their transfigura-
tion. We have done nothing to explain the ascension
of the Graal to heaven and the assumption of Galahad
when we have ascertained that some centuries before
there were myths about the Cauldron of Ceridwen or
that of the Dagda, any more than we have accounted
for Christianity if we have ascertained, and this even
171
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
indubitably, that some ecclesiastical ceremonial is an
adaptation of pre-Christian rites. Here, as in so many
other instances, the essence of everything resides in the
intention. If I possess the true apostolical succession,
then, ex hypothesi at least, I do not the less consecrate
the Eucharist if I use the Latin rite, which expresses
the words of institution in the past tense ; or some
archaic oriental rite, by which they are expressed in the
future, and to which there is added at some point the
Epiclesis clause, being the invocation of the Holy Spirit.
There is, in -any case, no question as to the Graal
antecedents in folk-lore, and I should be the last to
minimise their importance after their own kind, just
as I should not abandon the official Church because I
had been received into the greater Church which is
within. I believe personally that the importance has
been magnified unduly because it has been taken by
scholarship for the all in all of its research. But there
is plenty of room for every one of the interests, and as
that which I represent does not interfere with anything
which has become so far vested, I ask for tolerance
regarding it. My position is that the old myths were
taken over for the purposes of Christian symbolism,
under the influence of a particular but not an expressed
motive, and it was subsequently to this appropriation
that they assumed importance. It is, therefore, as I
have said, simply to clear the issues that I place those
of my readers who may feel concerned with the subject
in possession of the bare elements which were carried
from pre-Christian times into the Graal mythos, as
follows : —
i. We hear of an Irish legend concerning the
Cauldron of the Dagda, from which no company ever
went away unsatisfied. It was one of the four talismans
which a certain godlike race brought with them when
they first came into Ireland. As the particular talisman
in question, though magical, was not spiritual, it is
useless to our purpose ; but it connects with the palmary
172
The Early Epochs of the Quest
Hallow of the Graal mystery, because that also is reputed
to have been food-giving, though this property was the
least of its great virtues, just as the stone of transmutation
by alchemy was classed among the least possessions of
the Rosicrucian Fraternity.
2. There is the Cauldron of Bendigeid Vran, the son
of Llyr, in one of the old Welsh Mabinogion, the property
of which, says one story, is that if a man be slain to-day
and cast therein, to-morrow he will be as well as he ever
was at the best, except that he will not regain his
speech. He remains, therefore, in the condition of
Perceval when that hero of the Graal stood in the
presence of the mystery with a spell of silence upon
him. It follows that the Druidic Mysteries, as we find
them in Welsh legend, are like other initiations : the
candidate is passed through the experience of a mystical
death and is brought back, as, for example, by the
Cauldron of Ceridwen, to a new term of existence ; but
although in this sense the dead are raised, they are not,
or at least in this case, restored with the gift of tongues —
life, but no word of life. In other language, the silence of
the great pledges is henceforth imposed upon them. The
dead rise up, but they,do not begin to speak. Except
in so far as the Cup* of the Graal legend concerns
a mystery of speech and its suppression, it is difficult
to trace its correspondence with this cauldron, which I
should mention, however, came into Wales from Ireland.
If these things can be considered as so much raw material
out of which the Graal legend in fine issued, the fact
extends rather than reduces the transformation which
so operated that the Holy Vessel of Christian symbolism
was brought forth from a Druidic cauldron, which is
sometimes that of Ceridwen and sometimes of Bendigeid,
being at once the fountain of Bardic inspiration and the
provider of a feast of good things. In this connection we
may remember further that the chief mystic hero of Wales
was not so much King Arthur as Cadwaladr Fendigeid.
Paulin Paris was the first who attempted to identify this
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
chieftain with Galahad, but one essential distinction is
that in the Welsh myth Cadwaladr is destined to return,
whereas in the romance Galahad comes no more.
It so happens that institutions of analogy are made
occasionally by scholarship on warrants which they would
be the first to repudiate if the object, let us say, were
to establish some point advanced by a mystic. I do not
reject them exactly, and I do not intend to use similar
comparisons on evidence which appears so slight ; but I
must place on record that the derivations here mentioned,
if true, are unimportant, even as it is also unimportant
that Adam, who received the breath of life from the
Divine Spirit, had elements of red earth which entered
into his material composition. The lights which shine
upon the altar are not less sacramental lights because
they are also earthly wax ; and though the externals are
bread and wine, the Eucharist is still the Eucharist.
In addition to analogies like those which I have just
cited, there are two versions of the quest or mission of
Perceval into which the mystery of the Graal does not
enter as a part. In their extant forms they are much
later than any of the Graal literature in Northern French.
One is the story of Peredur, the son of Evrawc, in the
Welsh Mabinogion^ and the other is the English metrical
romance of Syr Percy ve lie. Scholars have compared both
to the Lay of the Great Fool, and I think that the analogy
obtains not only in the Welsh and English fables, but even
in such masterpieces of nature-born poetry as the work of
Chretien de Troyes. On the other hand, the English
poem is a thing of no importance except in respect of
its connections, its perfect form as a narrative, and its
high literary value. These claims notwithstanding, it
will be sufficient to say that even scholarship values it
chiefly for its doubtful traces of some early prototype
which is lost.
The scholarship of Dr. Evans is thought to account for
certain opinions which he holds regarding the high im-
portance of the Longer Prose Perceval, but he is correct
The Early Epochs of the Quest
at least in his instinct by the consequence of its com-
parison with other quests outside the Parsifal of Wolfram
and the Quest of Galahad. The Welsh Mabinogi is like
the wild world before the institution of the sacraments,
and from any literary standpoint we shall see that it is
confused and disconcerting ; the poem of Chretien is like
the natural world with its interdict just beginning to be
removed ; it is also like the blind man in part restored
to sight, seeing all things inverted and devoid of their
normal proportions. The Longer Prose Perceval occupies
a middle position between the Great Quest and Wolfram ;
the enchantment of Britain — as if Logres were this visible
Nature — has dissolved partly ; Grace is moving through
Nature ; the Great Mystery is being declared and testified
to everywhere. In the Parsifal the things which are
without have suffered a certain renewal, and yet the
German epic is not the nearest correspondence and
equivalent of the Galahad Quest.
It follows from these considerations, so far as they
have now proceeded, that the folk-lore antecedents of
the Graal are Celtic ; but I should mention that it has
not been determined finally by scholarship whether we
should look to Wales through Norman-French poets or
to Armorica through poets of Northern France for the
primordial matter of romance in respect of the literature.
Such a question, except as a preliminary gleaning leading
up to another concern, is a little outside our horizon,
but the concensus of opinion in England and France
favours the first alternative. To direct our attention
thither is by no means to set for our consideration a
clear vista or to open an easy pathway. It happens,
unfortunately, that as regards Wales there is as yet no
certain canon of criticism to distinguish the genuine
memorials of archaic literature from the vast mass of
false seeming which wears only the vestures and mask
of antiquity. It is now many years since M. Villemarque,
the Breton, illustrated what it was possible to do in the
production and extension of Armorican remains, and in
175
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the Principality there have been more than one Ville-
marque — -fabulatores famosi — whose results obtained, if
they have not been calculated to deceive even the elect,
have at least made the specialist wary, sometimes about
rejecting, but always of accepting anything in the definite
and absolute degree. Having regard to my own limita-
tions as one who has observed the strife scarcely, much
less shared therein, I seek only to note a single question
of parallel. The antecedents of folk-lore passed into
the literature of the Graal undergoing great transmuta-
tions, and so also did certain elements of old Druidism
merge into Christianity ; Rite and Myth and Doctrine
were tinged by Tradition and Doctrine and Rite ; for
things which co-exist tend to dovetail, at least by their
outer edges ; and there are traces, I think, of a time
when the priest who said mass at the altar was not only
a Druid at heart, but in his heart saw no reason also for
the Druid to be priest any less. Long after the conver-
sion of the Celt, enigmatical fables and mystical Rites
lingered in Gaul and Britain, and if one could say that
the Cauldron of Ceridwen was a vessel of pagan doctrine,
then in an equal symbolical sense it became a vessel of
hotch-potch under the strange asgis of the Celtic Church.
There were masters of mysteries and secret scienct, whose
knowledge, it is claimed, was perpetuated under the
shadow of that Church and even within the pale thereof.
The Bardic Sanctuary, by the evidence of some who
claimed to speak in its name, opposed no precious
concealed mysteries, and perhaps on its own part the
Church received into its alembic much that was not of
its matter expecting to convert it therein and turn it
out in a new form. In the fourth century there were
professors at Bordeaux who had once at least been
Druids, and for the doctrines of their later reception
the heart of their old experience may have been also
an alembic. St. Beuno in his last moments is recorded
to have exclaimed: "I see the Trinity and Peter and
Paul, and the Druids and the Saints ! " — a choir invisible,
The Early Epochs of the Quest
the recognition of which would, if known, have imperilled
his canonisation, supposing that its process had been
planned in Rome. At a much later period, even in the
twelfth century, we have still the indication of perpetuated
mysteries, and there is no doubt that the belief in these
was promoted generally by the bards. The twelfth
century saw also the beginning of a great revival of
literature in Wales. There are certain lolo manuscripts
which are late and of doubtful authenticity, but accepting
their evidence under all necessary reserves, they refer the
revival in question to Rhys ap Twdur, who assumed the
sovereignty of South Wales, bringing with him " the
system of the Round Table, as it is with regard to
minstrels and bards." And when the time came for
the last struggle between the Celtic and Latin Rites
for the independence of the British Church, I can well
believe that all which remained, under all transformations,
of that old mixed wisdom of the West was also fighting
for its life. When pseudo-Taliesin prophesied the return
of Cadwaladr, who had passed into the unmanifest, like
Arthur, and, like Arthur, was destined to return, I believe
also that this allegory of rebirth or resurrection, if it
referred on one side to the aspirations of the Celtic
Church, did not less embody on another the desired
notion of a second spring for the mysteries which once
dwelt in Wales, which even after many centuries were
interned rather than dead.
We can imagine — though perhaps at a far distance —
what kinds of medley resulted from such interpenetra-
tion of mysteries as I have here indicated : the sacrifice
of human victims in the ceremonial rites, on the one side ;
the eternal sacrifice of the Victim who was divine and
human, on the other ; the renovation of the candidate as
the term of symbolical ritual, and the Resurrection of
Christ as the first-fruits of the redeemed in the signal
degree. With these as the analogies of opposites, there
were meeting-points and enough in the Lesser Mysteries,
while encircling all as an atmosphere there were, on the
177 M
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
one hand, the presages, the signs, the omens, the vati-
cinations, the inspirations, dark and strange, of seers and
bards ; but, on the other, there were the great consecra-
tions, the holy objects, the sacred traditions, the inspired
writings and all the annals of sanctity. In fine, against
the solemn pageants of pagan ceremonial performances
there was the Great Mystery of the faith of Christ, the
white sacrifice and the clean oblation of the Eucharist.
I confess that if there were otherwise any evidence, I
can imagine that secret words, exceeding ex hypothesi all
words of institution in the Ordinary of the official Mass-
Book, and strange claims of a priesthood which had
never been seen at Rome, might well issue from so
enigmatic and dubious a sanctuary.
From all this matter of fact, matter of speculation
and high matter of dream, we can infer that wherever
the cradle may be of the true legend of the Graal —
Gaul, Armorica, or Wales, but the last as a probability
apart — there was at work, less or more everywhere in
the Celtic world, what I have called the alembic of
transmutation. I care not what went therein — Cauldron
of Ceridwen, Cauldron of the Dagda, head of Bran and
poisoned spear which smote him, Lay of the Great Fool,
Expulsion and Return Formula, Visitations of the Under-
world, and so forward for ever and ever — but that which
came out was the Mystery of Faith manifested after a
new manner, and the search for that sanctuary wherein,
among all waste places of the world, the evidence of
things unseen became palpable to the exalted senses of
the great Quest. Little and less than little it matters
how that began which ends at this high point, and for
us, therefore, who " needs must love the highest when
we see it," we can only bless the beginning which
brought the term we find; but its work is done, and it
is not a concern of ours.
In our childhood we passed through the realm of fables
from Bidpai to Lafontaine, but these were not everlasting
dwellings. In our youth there may still have been some
The Early Epochs of the Quest
of us who looked to see great lights in UOrigine de tons
les Cultes and in The Ruins of Empires, but again there was
no abiding place. At this day it seems weariness, as it
is indeed idleness, to go back to the solar mythologies,
or otherwise than with great caution to folk-lore, when
in far different flights we have touched the hem of His
garment. I do not propose to include the study of folk-
lore in the same category as the imaginings of Dupuis,
Volney and Godfrey Higgins ; but unless we can pre-
suppose a certain enlightenment, it proves a morass
sometimes rather than a pathway. However this may
be regarded, in establishing a new scheme of interpre-
tation, it is perhaps necessary rather than desirable that
a beginning should be made by doing justice to old
schemes, the office of which is at once recognised and
reduced by the entrance of an overlord into his proper
patrimony. I wish, therefore, to say that the appeal of
scholarship to the derivation of the legends from folk-
lore and the anxious collection of fresh data from this
source have acted in the past upon several groups of
students like the head of Braid's lancet-case on his
hypnotic subjects. They are pretexts which have
entranced them. There was never an occasion in
which folk-lore was more important at the beginning
and mattered in finality so little ; it is a land of en-
chantment, withal somewhat dreary, and through it
the unspelling quest passes laboriously to its term.
An old metaphorical maxim of one of the secret
sciences once said : " The stone becomes a plant, the
plant an animal, and the animal a man " ; but it did
not counsel its students to consult the stone that it
might better understand a man, though the stone re-
mains a proper subject of investigation within its own
limit. I leave it to readers who are after my own heart
and within the classes of my proper school to apply this
little parable to the question which is here at issue in
respect of the Graal in folk-lore. It remains to be said
that one field of Celtic research has been so far neglected
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
by scholarship, and it is that precisely which throws light
on the Christian aspects of the Graal legend apart from
the aspects of old non-Christian myth. If there are
analogies in the root-matter between the Hallows of Cup
and Lance and folk-lore talismans, there are others which
are far more intimate between the lesser matters of the
literature and Celtic Christian hagiology. But this is a
point which I note only, because it belongs to the close
rather than the beginning of our research. It seems
a commonplace to add at the moment that particular
Christian tradition has for its environment the general
traditions of Christianity, and, for explanatory purposes,
that may be best which lies the nearest to hand, but at
least it enters reasonably into the full consideration of
the whole subject.
Apart from the fixed purpose in the direction which
I have specified — that purpose which having exhausted,
and this too easily, the available fields of evidence, begins
to imagine new — apart from the thousand and one things
which, by the hypothesis, would be referable to folk-lore
if the wreckage of that world had not been disintegrated
so thoroughly by the mills of the centuries, the ante-
cedents of the Graal legend in folk-lore have been a wide
field for patient research, nor is that field exhausted ;
it has also offered an opportunity for great speculations
which go to show that the worlds of enchantment are
not worlds which have passed like the Edomite kings; but
as I know that there was a king afterwards in Israel, I
have concluded at this point to abandon those quests
which for myself and those whom I represent are with-
out term or effect, and to hold only to the matter in
hand, which is the development of a sacramental and
mystical cosmos in literature out of the strange elements
which strove one with another, as in the time of chaos
so also in pre-Christian Celtic folk-lore.
1 80
The Early Epochs of the Quest
II
THE WELSH PERCEVAL
This is one of the two texts which have been held to
offer independent traces of a pre-Christian and pre-Graal
period of the Quest, but in their present state they are
among the latest documents of the literature. It is
perhaps more difficult to speak of the Mabinogi con-
cerning Peredur, the Son of Evrawc, than of anything in
the Graal literature ; its elements are simple, its dimen-
sions small, but its difficulties seem almost insuperable.
The Red Book of Hergest^ of which it forms one of the
stories, is found in a Welsh manuscript which belongs
probably to the end of the thirteenth century, but the
contents of the collection are held to have existed in
a much earlier form, and this is now unknown. The
voice of criticism concerning the Peredur has become
less assured of late years, but in matter and manner
the story exhibits some elements which, even to the
unversed mind, might suggest its correspondence in
essentials with the claim which is made concerning it —
or that it is among the oldest of the quests. On the other
hand, there is little to support the unimaginative and
frigid criticism which, because the plot turns on a con-
ventional and not very purposeful vendetta, terms the
narrative logical and straightforward. I have intimated
already that it is really confused and disconcerting. It
is, indeed, the idlest of all stories, and it leaves several
of its episodes unfinished. We can accept, however, the
alternative construction which criticism has placed upon
the document ; it may be either an intermediate between
folk-lore and Graal literature, or otherwise a chaotic re-
flection from French sources. Probably it is a combina-
tion of both. The question is very interesting from some
points of view, but hereto it matters little. The Mabinogi
contains in any case the root-matter of the Perceval
181
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
legend, and it includes, therefore, some part of those
elements which were taken over by the Graal literature
and were perpetuated through all the Graal-Perceval
quests, though some part was abandoned when that quest
was carried into transcension. For example, the personal
history of the hero has certain uniform elements which
persist throughout ; the Peredur is, moreover, a pure
vengeance legend, which characteristic prevails in the
Conte del Graal, but has been eliminated from the
Longer Prose Perceval. I should add that the Didot
Perceval stands apart from the other texts not only
by the absence of any vengeance motive, but by the
fact that its early history of the hero must be held to
differ in totality.
Whether regarded as a sacrament or a talisman, it is
understood that there is nothing in the Welsh Perceval
which answers to the Holy Graal, but it enters into the
category of the literature for three palmary reasons : ( i )
Because it embodies the idea of a quest ; (2) because
this quest is connected with asking a conventional
question concerning certain talismans; (3) because these
talismans are in the house of a king or lord who is
maimed and whose healing would have resulted from the
question. Outside these specific correspondences, it is
obvious that Peredur of Wales is the Perceval le Gallois
of the Conte del Graal and the other Graal romances,
while, all variations notwithstanding, the history of the
one, in a broad sense, is also the history of the other.
Some important details on these several points may
be scheduled as follows: (i) The motive of the Quest
does not enter into the story until nearly its very end ;
(2) the question is never asked ; (3) there is no record
that the king is ever healed ; (4) the one accredited
talisman of the whole story does not figure as that
weapon which caused the maiming of the story.
It should be noted, however, with due consideration
for what has been said to the contrary by criticism,
that shadows of the characteristic Graal Hallows are to
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
be found in the story, but they serve no real purpose
therein. (a) THE CUP : there are, in fact, two cups,
both filled with wine and presented with their contents
to Perceval, on condition that he fights with their
bearers. (£) THE BOWL, also filled with wine, and this
passes on similar conditions. Perceval slays the bearers,
and we shall see that he is afterwards entertained by
an Empress for fourteen years. This incident has no
analogy with anything in the other documents, (c) THE
STONE, which is guarded by a serpent and is carried on
the tail of the reptile. The virtue of this stone is that
whosoever possesses it and holds it in one hand may have
in the other as much gold as he desires. The analogy
is therefore rather with the purse of Fortunatus than
with a Feast of Good Things, but incidentally it recalls
the latter, (d) THE SPEAR : this is of mighty size,
with three streams of blood flowing from its point to
the ground. It is the only so-called talisman of the
story, and its purpose is to occasion the question which,
if answered, will lead to the king's healing. Why it
is a spear and why it distils blood the story does not
explain. It has either been transferred from some other
legend, as, for example, a genuine Graal romance, and
placed without much reason in its present setting, or
there is no better instance of such an alleged transfer in
the whole cycle. The spear is seen once only, and on
that occasion is accompanied by a large salver in which
is a man's head surrounded with a profusion of blood.
The question which Perceval should have asked was
the meaning and the cause of these wonders. He is
cursed the next morning by his foster-sister, but it is
not because he forbears at the instance of his maternal
uncle. It is only after long years that his silence is
denounced by a boy disguised as a laidly woman, but at
the end of the whole business the question is never asked.
Apparently it is too late, and Perceval had only a single
chance, as he had in the poem of Heinrich and, after another
sense, in the Longer Prose Perceval. The penalty of his
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
failure is that " the lame king will have to endure
battles and conflicts, and his knights will perish, and
wives will be widows, and maidens will be left portion-
less." It does not appear that any of these disasters
come to pass, but certain sorceresses of Gloucester, who
caused the king's lameness among other misdeeds, are
destroyed, which does not heal the king, so that the
vendetta is a vain affair.
The father of Peredur was Evrac, who owned the
earldom of the North and had seven sons, with six
of whom he was slain, for they began in the folly of
tournaments and so ended. Peredur, the surviving and
youngest son, was taken by his mother into the wilder-
ness, where he could see neither horses nor arms, lest he
also should become a great warrior before the face of
the Lord, and die in battle, with all that violence which
signified the perfection of valour in those days of harsh
adventure. His companions were the women of his
mother, with some boys and spiritless men. In spite
of such precautions he was destined, however, to depart
from the house of his childhood in the wild and solitary
ways, where the life which he led was like that of a
savage hermit. He was the cutting of a fruit-tree and
was sadly in need of grafting : grafted he was in the
end on the great tree of Knighthood, yet he behaved
throughout with the thoughtlessness of the impassioned
man. It is only in the Graal romances that he puts
forth many blossoms, and sometimes splendidly, but
even then he does not bear the good fruit after its own
kind in anything but the latest texts.
One day Peredur saw three knights, but his mother
said that they were angels. He decided to become an
angel, but the questions which he put to them subse-
quently having obtained a more reliable account, he
resolved further to follow their vocation. Finding
that she could not dissuade him, his mother gave
him some notable instructions, as, for example, that
he should pay court to a fair woman, whether she
184
The Early Epochs of the Quest
would or no, and that if he obtained anything precious
he should bestow it, and so earn fame for his largesse.
In fine, she told him to repair to the court of King
Arthur. He mounted a sorry hackney and began a long
journey. Arriving at a rich tent, he mistook it for a
church and repeated his Pater noster, for he had little
knowledge of religion ; but the tent contained a beautiful
lady, who gave him refreshment and allowed him to take a
ring from her hand. Now, the lord of the glade became
angry because of Peredur, and said that the lady, who
was his wife, should not rest two nights in the same
house till he had visited vengeance upon him.
As the youth drew towards the court of King Arthur, a
Red Knight entered the palace, and seeing how the Queen
was served with wine by a page from a golden goblet,
he dashed the liquor in her face and smote her on the
face also ; but, despite his challenge, such was the un-
knightly condition of the Round Table that all present
feared to avenge the insult, believing that the aggressor
had magical protection ; and so he retired with the
vessel. Peredur then rode in, and asked for the
honour of knighthood ; but because of his outlandish
appearance, he was treated with indignity by Kay and
others of the household. A male and female dwarf, who
had dwelt in the palace for a twelvemonth, uttering no
word, found their tongues suddenly to praise him as the
flower of chivalry, for which they were beaten by Kay.
When Peredur demanded the accolade, he was told
jeeringly to follow the Red Knight, recover the goblet,
and possess himself of his horse and armour. He found
no difficulty in obeying, and by slaying the Knight he
accomplished 'his first mission of vengeance, which con-
tains a more important implicit than the vindication of
Arthur's Queen ; for, unknown to himself, the Red
Knight was he who had slain his father. The removal
of the armour he could not accomplish till Sir Owain
of the Round Table came to his help, after, which he
assumed it and mounted the dead man's horse. He
The Hidden Church oj the Holy Graal
restored the goblet to Owain ; but to return and receive
knighthood at the King's hands he refused until he had
punished Kay for the insult which he had offered to
the dwarfs. In this manner he began his second mission
of vengeance, the implicit whereof involved his own
vindication, because he, too, had been treated injuriously.
After various encounters, the result of which is that
many are sent to place themselves at King Arthur's
mercy, on account of the dwarfs, he met with an
ancient man, richly vested, whose attendants were fishing
on a lake, and who was therefore the substituted Rich
Fisher of the Graal stories.
It does not seem to follow that the servants caught
anything, but if they did it was not to our purpose.
The ancient man was lame, and he is therefore an alter-
native of the maimed king. He retired into a castle
at hand, whither Peredur followed, and being there
welcomed he learned that the host was his own uncle.
By him he was taught chivalry, was cautioned, for
no apparent reason, against asking questions, and was
assured that any reproach involved by his silence should
not fall on the boy but on himself only. It was as if
this uncle said : " Do not explore the concealed mysteries :
I will account." He accounts so badly, however, that
the disgrace is ultimately on Peredur.
The next day the youth reached another castle,
where he found a second uncle, at whose bidding he
smote a great staple three times with a sword, and
both things were shattered. The first and second time
he rejoined the pieces of the sword, and the staple was
also made good, as if automatically. The third time
neither would unite, and we thus have an alternative
of the Broken Sword in the Graal legends ; but nothing
follows in the Welsh story, nor is the weapon heard of
afterwards. What next occurred at the castle was a
Rite as of a Lodge of Mourning. Two youths entered
the hall bearing the mighty spear, from which poured
torrents of blood, and at the sight of this all the company
186
The Early Epochs of the Quest
fell into grievous lamentation. Two maidens followed
carrying a large salver, whereon was the man's head ; and
this, which was swimming in blood, as we have heard,
caused another great outcry. Peredur, however, had
been well counselled, and he asked nothing concerning
these marvels, which fact constitutes the great mystery of
the voided question and the prolonged sorrow of the lord.
Now, either the two uncles are distinct persons inhabiting
two castles, in which case (#) the story afterwards identifies
them, although vaguely, and (£) the relations are working
one against the other, unless there was some cryptic
understanding between them ; or they are one person
strangely confused, while the castles are one castle, in
which case the lame uncle himself issues that decree
of silence which will delay his healing indefinitely and
testifies to his separate existence as the brother first seen
by his guest. Whatever alternative is chosen, the story
rests distracting.
On the morning which followed these occurrences
Peredur rode away from the castle, and while still in
its vicinity he came upon a beautiful maiden, who was
watching by the side of her dead husband. She told the
youth that she was his foster-sister, that he was re-
sponsible for his mother's death because of his desertion,
and that he had therefore become accursed.
We shall see in the sequel that he was under interdict
after two manners, but in neither case does it appear to
carry a consequence. After this meeting, in which he
does everything to assist the distressed lady, and to recog-
nise a relationship for which there is nothing to account
in the story, he continued his journey and reached a castle,
wherein was another maiden, also in stress and besieged by
an earl whom she would not consent to wed. The un-
welcome suitor was vanquished by Peredur, who sent
him to the court of King Arthur, restored all her pos-
sessions to the despoiled lady, and after the space of
three weeks again rode away. It should be noted that
this maiden is the Blanchefleur of the Perceval -Graal
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
romances, the bride-elect of the hero in some parts of
the Conte del Graal, his wife in the conclusion of Gerbert,
and so also in the Parsifal of Wolfram.
The distress of damsels is a lesser keynote of the story,
and Peredur met now for a second time the lady of the
tent and pavilion, only to find her in sorry straits through
her lord's treatment, owing to the intrusion of the youth
in the early part of the story. He overcame the knight
in due course, enforced the usual pilgrimage, and pledged
him to deal loyally with the lady in future, she having
been at fault in nothing. In the adventure which next
followed, he found that a whole country had been wasted
by nine sorceresses of Gloucester, and they were now
attacking the sole remaining castle. Over one of them
Peredur prevailed, and she — though aware from of old
of all that they must suffer at his hands — invited him to
their palace. During three weeks he led a hidden life
among them for the ostensible purpose of learning
chivalry, which he knew already by its practice and
otherwise by the instruction of his uncle ; it is thus
certain that they could teach him little thereof, and of
sanctity nothing. The episode remains so unreasonable
that almost surely it must have followed some prototype
embodying another motive. By this time Peredur had
sent so many knights as hostages to Arthur's court, in
part to justify the dwarfs, that the king determined to
seek for him. The search began accordingly, and after
he had taken leave of his imputed instructors, the youth
was found by the companions of the Round Table at
the moment when he was wrapped in a love-trance,
thinking of the lady of his heart. This incident, so
trivial in itself, is included here because all the romances
repeat it in one or another form. Kay, among others,
disturbed Peredur rudely, and was chastised with violence.
In this manner was accomplished the second mission of
vengeance, or rather its implied part. Gwalchmai, who
is Gawain, approached Peredur gently and courteously,
and so brought him to the king. All went to Caerleon,
The Early Epochs of the Quest
and there Peredur, who, by inference from his trance and
a certain period of tarrying, may be supposed to have
loved previously the lady of the castle, became deeply
enamoured of another maiden ; but seeing that she failed
to respond, he vowed himself to silence in all Christendom
till she should love him above every man. He left
King Arthur's court and passed through various ad-
ventures, from which little follows in respect of the
other romances. The time came when he yearned to
revisit Caerleon and again have the maiden's society,
besides that of the knighthood. At the court on
account of his silence he suffered further indignity,
still on the part of Kay ; but after many signal examples
of chivalry, the lady of his affections, although she did
not recognise him, confessed that if only he could speak,
she should love him best of all men, as she did indeed
already, his dumbness notwithstanding. So was his vow
fulfilled ; and as he had sent many living gifts to the
male and female dwarfs, after a votive manner, it is to
be inferred that his second vengeance was further and
fully accomplished by the disgrace which his deeds re-
flected upon the unworthy Kay.
At a later period, he being again on his travels,
Peredur arrived at a castle, where the lord was a black
man who had lost one of his eyes, and it was his custom
to destroy every visitor who went to the place unasked.
One of the lord's daughters interceded vainly, for he
who at the time of need neglected to question his own
uncle now demanded an explanation of the circumstances
under which his present host had been deprived of his
eye. For this he was informed that he should not
escape with his life. However, in due course, he con-
quered the Black Master of the House and slew him,
after learning his secret. That secret caused him to
visit another castle, the knights in which rode out daily
to do battle with an obscure monster, which is termed
an Addanc in the story ; their bodies were brought back
by the horses, and they themselves were raised up again
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
nightly by the women of the household. Peredur, as will
be expected, went forth to destroy the monster and, in
return for the pledge of his future love, he was presented
by a strange woman with a stone which ensured his success.
As regards the covenant between them, he was told when
he next sought her to seek in the East — that is to say, in
India. Omitting an intermediate episode on which nothing
depends, he came to the Mound of Mourning, where three
hundred nobles guarded a serpent until the time should
come for it to die. The explanation is that the tail of
the serpent contained that mysterious stone to which I
have referred already — the stone of wealth inexhaustible
— and the intent of the whole company was to compete for
this jewel. Peredur destroyed the serpent, which they did
not dare to attempt, and, having compensated the other
seekers, he bestowed the prize on a knight who had been
in his service, thus fulfilling one behest of his mother.
He next reached a galaxy of tents, gathered about the
pavilion of the Empress Cristinobyl, who was resolved to
wed the most valiant man in the world, and him only.
This was the unknown enchantress by whose aid he was
enabled to conquer the Addanc. The place was filled
with competitors for her hand, but Peredur overcame
them all, and was entertained by the Empress for four-
teen years, as the story is said to relate ; it is the only
appeal to some antecedent source which occurs in the
whole text. In this way the hero's variable affections
find their rest for a period — by inference, in such a fairy-
land as was visited by Ogier the Dane.
Peredur came back at length to the Court of King
Arthur, without having attracted apparently any sur-
prise at his absence ; and, almost immediately after,
the palace was visited by a laidly damosel, through
whom it transpired what misery followed the failure
to ask the question at the Castle of the Lame King.
It is to be noted that so only, almost at the end of
the story, does the hero learn anything concerning his
omission and the fatality which it involved. He was
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
reproached, as we have seen, bitterly by his foster-
sister, but not about this matter ; and the inference
is that so far he had only reason for satisfaction in
having followed the counsel of his first uncle — until
the time came when he forgot the injunction at the
castle of the one-eyed lord. Being now undeceived,
he vowed to rest never until he knew the story of the
Lance. He departed accordingly, while, at the sugges-
tion of the same visitant, Gawain went in quest of a
castle on a high mountain, wherein it is said that there
was a certain maid in prison, and the fame of the world
was promised to him who released her. This is the
only instance, and a shadow at that, in which any quest
is allotted to the hero of all gallantry in this story,
though his adventures occupy so large a space in other
romances of Perceval. We hear nothing, however, as
to the term reached by Gawain. Peredur, after long
wanderings in search of the laidly maiden, whom he
seems to have regarded as a guide, was accosted by
a hermit, who upbraided him for bearing arms on so
holy a day as Good Friday. Recalled to that sense
of religion which he had forgotten apparently, he
responded in a becoming manner and received some
directions which brought him ultimately to the Castle
of Wonders. The first marvel which he saw therein
was a chess-board, whereon automatic pieces were
playing the game by themselves. The side which he
favoured was defeated, and in his anger he cast both
board and men into a lake. The laidly maiden appeared
thereupon and reproached him. He was set certain
tasks, under the pretext of recovering the playthings ;
they included that adventure of stag and hound with
which we shall be concerned later ; but the term
of all was to bring him for a second time to the
castle of his maimed uncle and to the end of his
quest. Thither Gawain had preceded him, and in this
manner, as in several of the Graal romances, the knight
of earthly courtesy is somehow connected with the
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
quest — whether he has undertaken it himself, or by
accident, as in this instance.
Peredur found no Lance and he asked no questions,
but he was told by a yellow-haired youth, who begged
the boon of his friendship since they two were cousins,
that it was he who in the far past carried the ensanguined
talisman, that he bore also the salver, and at the end of
long years of adventure, long years of faerie life, that
he appeared as the laidly maiden. As the question had
passed into desuetude and, all his vow notwithstanding,
as he learned nothing concerning the Lance, it is pos-
sible, as I have suggested, that the opportunity of
asking and of receiving knowledge was not granted a
second time to the seeker. With these things also
the head in the dish of blood passed into the limbus of
desuetude, like the foster-sister of Peredur and his dubious
alternative uncle ; no one thought further about them,
though the seeker did learn that the head was that of
another cousin, who was killed by the sorceresses of
Gloucester. It was they also who lamed his uncle, and
for this he was to wreak vengeance upon them. Here,
therefore, was the third and final vendetta which Peredur
accomplished, with the assistance, curiously enough, of
Arthur and all his household, by the destruction of the
nine priestesses of evil magic. Whether this healed his
uncle or relieved the land and the people is not told in
the story, nor do we learn anything further concerning
the hero, or what, in fine, became of him. Perhaps in
the castle of his uncle he completed a third period of
hidden life.
I have not entered into the Quest of the Holy Graal
for the unsatisfying purpose of reproducing the romances
in synopsis, and those more especially which are outside
the high issues of my real concern. But in respect of
the claims which have been and are still advanced con-
cerning it, as the last reflection of some primordial type
of quest, the Welsh Perceval seems to call for presenta-
tion adequately, that my readers may understand, firstly,
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The Ear/y Epochs of the Quest
the scope of the points of contact, and, secondly, may
thus appreciate the better those greater points of diver-
gence between this text and the true traditional tales of
the Holy Vessel. The same motive will occasion the
same treatment of the next and more excellent version,
which is now posed for our consideration.
Ill
THE ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCE OF
STR PERCY TELLE
Among the extrinsic evidences that the Welsh non-Graal
quest of Peredur contains the fibrous roots of a legend which
was earlier than the Graal period of literature, there is
the analogical story of Syr Percy velle, which belongs in its
present form to the fifteenth century, being therefore far
later than the Mabinogion, though there is an Italian story
which is even later still. Among the intrinsic evidences
are the wild elements which characterise the Mabinogion
generally of the Red Book of Hergest, suggesting an
archaic state. I do not know that the last word has
been said upon either testimony, but I do know that
the Peredur is not a Graal story, and if its roots could
be traced to Atlantis it would still be nothing to our
purpose. When the bells began to ring at the outset
of our great speculation, we said in our hearts : Sanctus,
Sanctus, Sanctus. We look, therefore, for the elevation
of the Graal on our high altar of research, and our pass-
word is, Sanctum Graal.
There is very little question that this poem is in the
position described by scholarship — that is to say, it is a
fifteenth-century presentation of a legend which may
be far older than any of the Graal quests in which
Perceval is the hero. Its elements are simple and primi-
tive. They are much simpler and perhaps far more
primitive than are those of the Welsh Peredur, while
they are less disconcerting and aimless. The poem is
193 N
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
in perfect harmony with itself; it has a conclusion proper
to its beginning and intervening incidents which so work
that the term indicated at the start is brought logically
about.
It is the antithesis of any of the Graal romances — there
is scarcely any quest at all ; secondly, there is no ques-
tion ; there are no hallows of any kind, either Lance
or Sword or Cup ; finally, there is no enchantment of
Britain. It is a savage story — naked and not ashamed ;
it calls on the kingdom of blood to be manifested about
the hero, and he ensures its coming.
The mere skeleton of the poem will exhibit its points
of contact with the Welsh Perceval and those of its
divergence therefrom. The father of Perceval, who had
also the same name, was for his valiant deeds married
to the sister of King Arthur. She bore him only the
one son, for a great tourney was held to celebrate the
birth, and thereat the father was slain by a knight in
red armour. As in the previous story, his widow fled
into the wilderness, taking the child with her, so that
he should know nothing of deeds of arms. He was
brought up in the wild wood, with the wild beasts for
his companions. However, as the boy grew up the
mother gave him a small Scotch spear, and with this
he became so dexterous that nothing could escape him.
He was clothed in skins, and for a long time seems
to have been reared as a heathen ; but it came about
at length that the lady taught him some prayers to the
Son of God, and shortly after he met with three knights
of King Arthur's court, one of them being Gawain and
another Kay. He inquired which of them was the
great God about whom his mother had taught him, and
threatened to slay them if they refused to answer. He
was told who they were, and then asked whether King
Arthur would knight him also. He obtained a sorry
horse, took leave of his mother, and rode to court clothed
in his skins of beasts, and nourishing a firm resolution
to slay the king if he would not grant his request. At
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
parting the mother gave him a ring to be kept as a token,
and she promised that she would await his return. On
his road he reached a pavilion wherein was a lady asleep.
He kissed her and exchanged a certain ring which she
wore for the one that had been given to himself. He
arrived at the court of all chivalry, and King Arthur
recognised the boy's likeness to that older Perceval who
had received his own sister as wife. The king, however,
and apparently the whole chivalry had been reduced
to recurring distress through fear of the Red Knight,
who came regularly to rob the king of the cup out of
which he was drinking. Perceval's arrival was coincident
with another visitation of this kind, being the fifth during
as many years. The Cup was of red gold, and it was
seized while the king was in the act of putting it to his
lips. Perceval, who was a witness, offered to bring back
the vessel if the 'king would knight him, and the king
promised to do so on his return. He went to fetch
armour for the child, but Perceval in the meantime
departed. The Red Knight did not wish to do battle
with so sorry an opponent, but in the end there was a
momentary combat, Perceval slaying the champion by
throwing his dart, which passed through one of his eyes.
For what it is worth, we have here an instance of that
vengeance legend of which folk-lore traces examples in
the Graal literature. It is true that Perceval slays the
Red Knight, but, as in the Welsh Peredur, he does so
without knowing that his victim was responsible for his
father's death ; his sole and simple object is to wipe out
the affront offered to the king. After the encounter
Perceval, with the assistance of Gawain, who had followed
and come upon the scene, stripped the body of the armour,
and the youth was clothed therein. He did not return
to claim the promised reward of knighthood, and Gawain
was the bearer of the Cup to the king. His next office
was to destroy a witch who was the mother of the Red
Knight, and on account of his armour he was taken then
and subsequently for that personage himself. He arrived
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
at a castle, to which there came presently from the
Maiden Land a messenger who was on his way to King
Arthur entreating assistance for his mistress, the Lady
Lufamour. She was being oppressed by a sultan who
desired her for his wife, and because of her refusal he
had slain her father and brother and had wasted her
lands, so that she had only one castle left in which to
take refuge. To this castle Perceval asked the way of
the messenger, with the intention of destroying the
Saracen, but the messenger preferred to continue his own
road and get help from the king. Perceval, on his part,
determined to discover it for himself, and the three
sons of his host insisted on accompanying him, which they
did for a certain distance, after which he contrived to
shake them off. Meanwhile the messenger reached the
court and had a very indifferent answer from the king,
who, together with his knights, appears in rather a
pitiful light throughout all the early portion of the
story. The king, in fact, tells him that there is no
lord in his land who is worthy to be called a knight.
However, on hearing of the description of the chivalrous
youth who was seen by the messenger from the castle on
his road to court, the king concluded that this was
Perceval, and called for horses, arms and companions of
his table to follow in quest of the hero, fearing that he
might be slain before they could reach him. By this time
Perceval had arrived at the Maiden Land, and found a
host of tents marshalled about a city. He set to and slew
many, his ingenuous warcry being apparently that he had
come to destroy a soldan. He slept in the open field,
with his dead round him. The Lady Lufamour came
to survey the slaughter from the height of her walls,
and descried the knight whom she supposed to have
effected it. She sent her chamberlain to bring him
into the city ; therein she made him good cheer, and
fell in love at first sight. He returned to do battle in
her cause, she promising herself and the kingdom if he
destroyed the soldan. He behaved in a manner which
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
recalls the worst combats in the Spanish romances of
chivalry, wherein one knight scatters a thousand paynims.
Meanwhile, King Arthur and his companions arrived, but
were mistaken by Perceval for enemies, and he fought
with Gawain. However, ultimately they recognised each
other and embraced. All proceeded to the castle, and
Arthur recounted to the lady the early history of Perceval.
The next morning he was knighted by the king, and again
went forth against the soldan, whom he slew finally. He
was made king of the country, and wedded Lufamour.
He was still in the first year of his marriage when he re-
membered his mother, and rode away to find her. This
is the quest of the story, and on the way he had to
champion the lady of the pavilion, who had fallen into
the hands of her husband for the business of the ring.
He reconciled them vi et armis, and learned that the ring
which he had borrowed had such virtues that the wearer
could be neither slain nor wounded. He proposed to
exchange again, but the husband had given that which
was Perceval's to the lord of the land, a giant of whom
none would dare to ask it : he was, indeed, the brother
of the soldan, but there is no need to say that Perceval
in due course not only defeated but dismembered him.
He recovered his ring at the giant's castle, and learned
from the seneschal that his master had offered it to a lady
whom he besought in marriage ; that she recognised it
as her son's ring, and, supposing that he had been slain
by the giant, she fled distracted into the forest hard by.
Perceval was now close on the track of his quest-object ;
he assumed a garment of skins, that she might know him
the more easily ; and it was not long before the mother and
son met and were henceforth reunited. They repaired
to the giant's castle, till the lady was restored to health
and sanity. In fine, he carried her home, where she was
welcomed by his queen and the great lords. This was
the good end of Perceval's mother, and in this way the
story describes its perfect circle. The end of Perceval
himself was in the Holy Land.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
IV
THE CONTE DEL GRAAL
§ A. — PRELIMINARY TO THE WHOLE SUBJECT
The elements of Robert de Borron's poem are those of
the apocryphal gospel rather than of the romance, as
we now understand that term. I do not wish to be con-
strued too expressly, as I am simply creating a compari-
son or instituting a tolerable approximation. In the Conte
del Graal of Chretien de Troyes and the group of poets
who continued what his zeal had begun, we enter into a
different atmosphere from that of the two texts with which
we have been concerned previously, and yet it has analo-
gies therewith. As a whole, it is the sharpest possible con-
tradistinction to the hypothetical non-Graal quest; but in
its first part, being that which was furnished by Chretien, it
represents more especially the transition from the folk-tale
to the true Graal romance, and it offers in itself a certain
typical specimen of the developing process. There is
therefore little which distinguishes especially and signally
this branch from the old tale of Peredur, as we can con-
ceive it in its original form ; there is a great deal by
which several parts of Manessier's conclusion are dis-
tinguished from both, and still more the alternative
rendering of Gerbert. Between all of them and the
Quest of Galahad it is understood, this notwithstand-
ing, that the deep abyss intervenes. The elements of
Chretien's poem are perhaps the most natural born that
it has entered into the heart to conceive. The narrative
is beautiful, or perhaps I should say that it is charming,
after the manner of Nature ; it is like a morning in
spring. It has something more than the touch of Nature
which takes us at once into its kinship ; it seems actually
Nature speaking ; and so much of the Graal Mystery as
can be said to enter within its dimensions is that Mystery
expressed in the terms of the outside world, though still
198
The Early Epochs of the Quest
bearing a suggestion of translation direct from a strange
and almost unknown tongue. The poem, taken as a
whole, has few symbolic elements, and they are so
entirely of the natural sacraments that it is difficult to
recognise one touch of grace therein. Again, I except
from this description what is termed the interpolation
of Gerbert, which in comparison with the rest is like a
Masonic tracing-board lecture compared with an essay of
Goldsmith. This analogy is instituted expressly to show
that in the widest construction Gerbert is also far from
the goal.
Well, the Conte is a product of successive generations,
but this granted it is the work of a single epoch. If it
be approached simply from the poetic standpoint, there
is no doubt much to repay the reader, if he be not de-
terred by the difficulties of extremely archaic French
verse. But of the odor suavitatis of the sanctuary, of
that which criticism has agreed to describe as the ascetic
and mystic element, of that element which I and those
whom I represent desire and look for, there is so little
that it can barely be said to exist. Many who know and
appreciate the sacramental mystery which attaches in
certain parts to the Graal Quest in Malory and to the
Longer Prose Perceval, which has been termed The High
History of the Holy Graal^ by Dr. Evans, its translator,
will appreciate exactly this contrast, and will understand
that in Chretien de Troyes there is little of the secret
once delivered to the saints of any sanctuary, though
he made use of materials which may have carried this
suggestion with them. He is described by his one editor
as the poet of love, and as the poet who created the
poetry of sentiment. He is fresh, natural, singularly
direct, and he carried his intention very plainly on the
surface in respect of his presentation of the story, so
far as he is known to have taken it. To put it briefly,
anything that is recondite in its significance is that which
is typical of the entire cycle, while that which is obvious
is of the poet.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
The Conte del Graal was begun, approximately speak-
ing, about the third quarter of the twelfth century, and
this metrical romance is the longest of the whole cycle,
unless we elect to include the compilation which passes
under the name of the Dutch Lancelot. It is the work
of several hands, first among whom, both as to time and
merit, is Chretien de Troyes. He derived his materials
from a source which is no longer extant, and is respon-
sible for something less than one-eighth of the entire
medley, unless, indeed, his editor, M. C. Potvin, is cor-
rect in his opinion that certain preliminary and certain
subsequent matter, now regarded as later, should be in-
cluded in his work. But this, I believe, is rejected with
no uncertain voice by all later criticism.
Speaking generally of those quests of the Holy Graal
into which we are here entering by a kind of anticipation,
in order to dispose of one which offers too little to our
purpose, it is not very difficult to follow the mind of
romance in its choice one after another of several heroes,
though these are exclusive of each other. In a subject
of this kind, I care little for antecedents in folk-lore as
such, and many speculative constructions of scholarship
may also be set aside reverently. It does not appear, for
example, by the texts themselves that Sir Gawain was at
any time the typical hero of the quest, not even in the
mind of Chretien, though I have said that he was after
the manner born of Nature in his general treatment of
the theme. There are two heroes only, whether typical
or otherwise, and these are Perceval and Galahad, but
among these Perceval is neither the ideal questing Knight
nor one who can be called possible until he has under-
gone the transmuting process of the later texts. Perhaps
at the highest he represents the spirit of romance when
it was tinctured only in part by sacramental mystery ;
Galahad represents that spirit when it has undergone the
complete change. From this point of view, we may say
that there are three epochs of the Quest in Northern
France : —
200
The Early Epochs of the Quest
(a) The epoch of Chretien, all continuations included,
and of the T)idot Perceval considered as a derivative of
Robert de Borron, one of growth and development after
its own manner.
(£) The epoch of the Longer Prose Perceval, deriving
from the putative Walter Map and the later Merlin
romances.
(c] The epoch of the Great Prose Lancelot and the
Quest of Galahad.
It is understood that I am using the term epoch to
characterise a condition of mind rather than one of time,
and, secondly, that the German cycle of the Holy Graal
remains over for consideration. It should be observed
in the first epoch that Chretien and Gautier are the only
French writers who tolerate the notion of an alternative
Graal hero in the person of Gawain. In the second epoch
there is Perceval shining in the kind of light which is
native only to Galahad, for the visit which is paid by
Gawain to the Graal Castle is not a part of the Quest
but a pure matter of chance, and he is reflected in a
high mirror of idealism. In the third epoch we have
the Quest in its final exaltation, and there are many
heroes, each of whom is dealt with according to his
merits, with Galahad as the Morning Star among all the
lesser lights. Gawain " died as he had lived, in arms "
and spiritual inhibition. It is in the Conte del Graal, the
Longer Prose Perceval and in more than one dubious text of
the German cycle that he is represented as an intentional
Graal quester. It is true that he proposes the experiment
in the prose Galahad, but he takes none of the instituted
precautions, and he abandons it easily and early. Those
who imputed a certain righteousness to Nature allowed
him some qualified success within the measure of their
capacity, but it came about that the mystic mood inter-
vened and, having found that Nature was of no effect,
the Quest was transferred thenceforward into the world
of mystery.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
§ B. — THE POEM OF CHRETIEN DE TROVES
By our previous considerations we have ascertained
that after certain preliminary matters which are curious,
but late in comparison and dubious, the Conte del Graal
was opened in ample form by a master-singer of his period
—that is to say, by Chretien de Troyes. Now, if it be
agreed that the Peredur and Syr Percyvelle are reflections of
a lost primordial quest, it is desirable to note that they
offer nothing concerning the feast of good things and the
Bowl of Plenty. How, therefore, from the standpoint
of scholarship, did this element, confessedly foreign
thereto, in the beginning of things, come to be imported
therein ? There is no trace of it, as we have seen, in the
long section of that great poem which is now set for our
consideration, though it is supposed to have heralded
and inaugurated everything which belongs to the seeking
part of the Graal literature. It was not evidently from
this source in folk-lore that Chretien derived his know-
ledge of that mysterious object which he calls a Graal
and from which was diffused so great a light, though
nowhere in his long contribution does he term it the
Holy Graal. It was carried by the maid who had charge of
it in her two hands, from which it may follow either that it
was a heavy object, as might be a large dish, or something
exceedingly sacred — to be exalted with reverence — as it
might be, an Eucharistic Chalice or a most holy Reliquary.
That it was not certainly the first of these objects is made
evident by the fact that a Dish was carried separately in
the pageant at the Graal Castle. We know further from
the brief description that it was a jewelled vessel : —
" Pieres pressieuses avoit
El graal, de maintes manieres,
Des plus rices et des plus cieres
Qui el mont u en tiere soient ;
Tote autre pieres pasoient
Celes dou greal, sans dotance."
202
The Early Epochs of the Quest
That it connects with the second or the third in my enu-
meration of possible objects is shown at a much later stage
to Perceval in the narrative of his uncle the hermit, who
tells how some hidden King of the Graal is sustained and
comforted by a Sacred Host therein. Whencesoever the
German poet Heinrich drew his materials, it is obvious
that he and Chretien speak of the same vessel and, as I
have shown otherwise, rather of a ciborium than a Reli-
quary. The essence of a Reliquary is that it should
contain an invariable sacred deposit, as, for example, the
Precious Blood of our Saviour or the liquefying blood of
St. Januarius. We are therefore at once in the region of
great sacramental wonders. The legends of sanctity had
already in far other texts borne witness to those cases in
which the supersensual Bread of Life had served for the
saints as their only daily nourishment. This is therefore
the manner in which Chretien de Troyes understood —
had he indeed heard of them — the feeding properties of
the Graal. It follows — and we shall see duly — that
three poets — Wolfram, Heinrich and Chretien — who are
at the poles sometimes in variance over matters of sym-
bolism, do yet, in the most important of all their con-
cerns, tell the same story. And we who know better
than they could have ever known all that is involved in
the root-matter of their testimony, can say in our hearts,
even when we hear these dim echoes which are far from
the term of the Quest : —
" Tu qui cuncta scis et vales,
Qui nos pascis hie mortales,
Tuos ibi commensales,
Cohaeredes et sodales
Fac sanctorum civium."
We have no doubt as to the service or the table, and can
bear witness on our own part that " many men, both of
high and low condition in these last years past," have to
our knowledge seen the mystery of all sacredness and
sweetness unveiled before their spiritual eyes. It follows
that if there were many antecedents, the Graal is still one,
203
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and that even at the epoch of Chretien the true nature
of the Sacred Vessel was known, and that clearly. Of
himself the poet knew nothing, but in some book which
he followed there must have been strange materials. One
of the keynotes may be — among many others — that
Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, investigated about 1 140 a case
of miraculous sustenance by the Eucharist.
As regards the source of his story the poet himself
gives us an exceedingly simple explanation. He says
that he wrote by command of a certain Count — that is to
say, Count Philip of Flanders. The order was :—
" A rimoir le mellor conte
Qui soit contes en court roial."
The materials were written materials, namely, li contes del
Greal, as to which // Quens li bailla le livre. Such was
the source of the earliest Quest-matter ; and the earliest
extant History-matter depends also from a great book,
wherein great clerks wrote " the great secrets which are
called the Graal " :—
" Ge n'ose center ne retreire,
Ne ge ne le pourroie feire,
Neis, se je feire le voloie,
Se je le grant livre n'avoie
Ou les estoires sunt escrites,
Par les granz clers feites et dites :
La sunt li grant secre escrit
Qu'en nvmme le Graal et dit."
Whereas therefore his patron communicated to Chretien,
it was Robert de Borron who communicated to Walter
Montbeliard, in whose service he was. We see in this
manner that the first poet of the Conte del Graal depended
on antecedent authority which was not of the oral kind ;
by one stage the question of source raised here has been
moved back, and there must be left for the present.
We saw in the Welsh Perceval that there was a sword
which broke and was rejoined, but in the stress of the
last trial it was shattered beyond recovery. The episode
in Chretien which corresponds hereto is represented
204
"The Early Epochs of the Quest
sufficiently for my purpose by the details already given
when considering the Hallows of the Legend. I may add
only that while certain codices make no attempt to account
for the return of the Broken Sword to the Graal Castle,
there are others which illustrate the foreknowledge of
the king by his despatch of a messenger to follow Per-
ceval in his travels till the mischance of the promised
peril overtakes him. In yet others the fragments of
the mystic weapon seem to have been spirited away. It
will be seen that in the Welsh Perceval there is nothing
to connect the maiming of the Lord of the Castle with
the gigantic Lance which is carried about therein. The
connection remains naturally a reasonable inference, but
we cannot tell. The Sword certainly serves no purpose
but that of a trial of strength. In Chretien it appears,
on the other hand, almost as a part of the plot, and the
scheme is carried out by the sequels in accordance with
so much as may be called manifest in the intention of
the first poet.
Turning from the Hallows of the story, it so happens
that it is after the manner of Chretien to furnish his
most important elucidations with the least suggestion
of intention. I have spoken of the mystery of that
Chamber wherein the Graal enters or re-enters after its
manifestation in the pageant, or into which alternatively
the dove flies in one Quest of the Greater Chronicles,
before the Sacred Vessel is displayed. It is Chretien
only who discloses the secret of the hidden place, or
at least manifests up to what point he understands it
himself, when he says of the king, whom I interpret as
sometime king of the Graal : —
" . xx . ans i a estet ensi.
Que fors de la cambre n'issi
U le Greal veis entrer."
It was the bedchamber of that Warden of the Hallows
who was far more concealed than he who is called or
miscalled the Rich Fisher in the same text. The
further question which arises for our consideration
205
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
concerns, therefore, this nameless being who is the
father of the king in evidence. The allusions to him
are so brief and so vague that those who continued
the story thought it best to ignore them, though I
hold it as certain that Gautier had the elements of an
explanation in his hands. Without forestalling what
there is to say on this point in the next sub-section,
I will refer back to an earlier part of our inquiry,
when it was noted that the quest in Chretien presup-
poses an early history and — notwithstanding certain
confusions, as, for example, regarding the origin of
the title King Fisherman — that this history may have
corresponded, in respect of its essence, to the first draft
of the metrical romance by Robert de Borron, or alter-
natively to the source from which the latter drew, and
in which it may be hazarded that there seem to have been
several histories. It is too early to speculate whether
the texts which had come into the possession of the pious
minstrel included the single story which the Count of
Flanders placed in the hands of Chretien, but there
must have been a general prototype. Apart from the
Longer Prose Perceval, which is extra-lineal in most details
of its tradition, there are three persons connected im-
mediately with the Graal in the various quests. In the
Parsifal of Wolfram there are (a) Titurel — precisely in
the position of the mysterious king in Chretien, and
like him abdicated ; (#) the reigning king Amfortas,
who is fed by the Graal ; and (c) Parsifal, the king
who is to come. In the quest of Galahad there are
(a) the maimed king, Pellehan ; (£) the reigning king,
Pelles ; and (<:) Galahad, the king who is to come.
In the Didot Perceval there are (#) Brons, who is sick
of the centuries, but still the Graal king ; (£) his
son Alain, but in this case he dies, without it being
possible for us to assign his special place in the
mystery ; and (<:) Perceval, as a coming king who is
in the warfare of his training. Now, this notion of a
triple guardianship was first put forward in the romance
206
The Early Epochs of the Quest
of De Borron, and is evidently one of the root-ideas of
the historical branches ; and if in a certain sense it is
broken in the Book of the Holy Graal to establish some
phantom of a chronological succession, the Quest which
follows therefrom recurs, as we see, thereto. I should
add that the Royal Family of the Holy Graal — in the
story of Chretien and its sequels — has no names in the
canonical texts till Perceval comes into his own, but
there is a variant or interpolation in a Berne manu-
script which follows the keepership in De Borron.
Separating from the poem of Chretien not merely the
prologue, which is by another hand, but an introductory
part which is also of uncertain authorship, while it has
elements in rather close correspondence with the Welsh
Mabinogi of Peredur, and adhering to the more authentic
poem itself, there is a diversity of the circumstances under
which Perceval was born whereby it is set apart from the
Welsh story and from theEnglishpoem. Intheintroduction
there are variants from these, but they are matters of detail.
According to Chretien, it is the maiming of Perceval's
father which takes the family into the woods. Perceval
is the youngest of three sons, and the time comes for the
others to be sent into the world. They are commissioned
to the courts of two kings, where they are both knighted
on the same day, and, though widely separated, both are
also slain. It is this misfortune which causes the death
of the father and the desire on the mother's part to
isolate her remaining boy from all knowledge of chivalry.
While the result is a certain inexperience, he does not
seem so savage or untrained as in the texts which we
have considered previously, and the surroundings of his
father's house are those of a knight who has retired
to a country estate on account of his health. Seeing
that there is nothing so little to my purpose as to be
at any unnecessary pains regarding the conventional
story part of successive texts, I shall deal very shortly
with points of minor variation in the life and adventures
of the hero, and as regards the major episodes, they may
207
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
be thus recited in summary : — The adventure of the
Pavilion ; the initial visit to the Court of King Arthur ;
the struggle with the Red Knight ; the sojourn with an
instructor in chivalry ; the liberation of that Lady of the
Castle who is here named Blanchefleur ; the first visit to
the House of the Graal ; the meeting with Perceval's kins-
woman afterwards ; the exoneration of the Lady of the
Pavilion ; the search of the King and his knights after
the hero whom they had once rejected almost ; the
love-trance ; the denunciation of Perceval by the laidly
damosel ; his godless wanderings ; the episode of Good
Friday ; the renewal of grace which he receives at the
hands of a hermit, who — in this case — is his uncle : all
these follow in due order, and though it is not throughout
the exact order which we find in the Welsh Mabinogi, that
text remains the artificial prototype representing the early
narrative portion, and to this Chretien has added the Holy
Graal as his ostensible motive in chief. The first sojourn
of Perceval at the Graal Castle takes place in the absence
of any design on the part of the hero ; he is not,
in other words, on the Quest of the Sacred Vessel and
he knew nothing about it. When he has liberated
Blanchefleur from her thraldom in the castle of Beau-
repaire, his avowed quest is that which will bring him to
his mother, but when he has found her he will return
to the maiden, will marry her and share her rule.
The other maiden who reproaches him for his failure
immediately after his departure from the Graal Castle
is his cousin-german instead of his foster-sister, and in
addition to his responsibility in respect of his mother's
death, she denounces him for not asking the redeeming
questions concerning the Vessel and the Lance. In this
manner the subsequent reproaches of the laidly damosel
at the Court of King Arthur — which is in camp on the
quest of Perceval, and not at Caerleon — concern a twice-
told tale. The adventures of Perceval are carried by
Chretien as far as his visit to that uncle who has em-
braced the life of a hermit.
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
§ C. — THE EXTENSION OF GAUTIER
It is certain that the poet who took up the thread of
the story which was left by Chretien had antecedent texts
to go upon outside the work of his predecessor, and that
one at least of these is not to be identified with purely
folk-lore materials. It is considered that the metrical
romance of De Borron was not one of his documents,
and on the hypothesis — or perhaps I should say on the
theory — of a primordial non-Graal Quest — as reflected
into the Welsh Mabinogi and the English Syr Percyvelle
—it would follow that he had seen this. Now, there
are traces in the Mabinogi of an intention which might
have led up to the marriage of Perceval and Blanchefleur,
if his enchantment by the empress had not extended over
a period which put such a possibility out of the question.
In the English metrical story the marriage is a natural
conclusion, and we have seen that it takes place accord-
ingly. In Chretien there are the same traces, and they
reappear more strongly in Gautier, but the term of his
intention is unmanifest because he failed to conclude.
The common consent of scholarship would hold probably
that the prototype of both poets celebrated a bridal at its
end. It contained also the widely diffused story of the
maiden and the hound, or bracket, which I have held over
from the Welsh story to speak of in this place. Finally,
in some form it had the curious episode of the chess-
board. But, fully developed as they are in the long
extension of Gautier, these things are of his accidents
only, while of the essence is his zeal of the Graal Quest,
which overrules all things else in his ingarnering of
diverse memorials. Of that quest he has practically two
heroes, and though a superior success attends the search
of Perceval the adventures of his alternate Gawain are
recounted at still greater length. This latter part, taken
over from the first poet of the Conte, at once so extended
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and so important in its Graal elements, is postponed for
consideration separately, registering here the bare fact
only that in the section of Gautier and in the additamenta
thereto belonging, Gawain appears most expressly as one
of the heroes connected with the vision of the Holy
Vessel. Of their comparative merits there need be no
question, as the grace of sanctity had not entered into the
heart of the poet who began or of him who extended
the Graal story. The Sacred Vessel was glorieus and the
Sacred Vessel was sains, but the election thereto was that
of the best Knight in the world, or his nearest co-heritor
in chivalry, and not of him who was resplendent in the
arms of spiritual achievement. Gawain was therefore, in
this sense, scarcely less eligible than Perceval, and the
ground of his comparative failure was either an implied
incapacity from the fact that he was not of the Keeper-
ship lineage or that for some reason it had been decided
to regard Perceval as the more elect hero among two
exotic flowers of Knighthood.
Of Perceval himself, however, who for the purpose of
introducing Gawain had been left far behind in the nar-
rative of Chretien, we hear no single word till nearly half
the work has been accomplished by Gautier. His story
is then resumed at the point when the hero has departed
from the hermitage of that uncle who has brought him
into a tolerable state of repentance, purging him by the
offices of the Church, and has communicated, as if it
were in secret Mass or sacred Eucharist, the first mys-
teries of the Graal. Perceval had been denounced pre-
viously for the omission which he had almost covenanted
to make, and no hope had been extended that he should
yet act as repairer in fine, so that from initial point to
term, as he could then perceive it, some blind and im-
placable fatality appeared to have been at work alone.
Now, on the other hand, and if not all too plainly, it
looked as if there followed by inference that a high hope
of achievement was held out to him by his uncle's words ;
he resolved therefore that he would not return to King
2IO
The Early Epochs of the Quest
Arthur's court till he had revisited the Fisher King's
Castle and inquired concerning the Graal. But all with-
out that secret fastness was not only beset by perils
and hard encounters, but it turned in a glass of strange
vision and great deception. Once more, I am not con-
cerned in summarising the story to take in all its details,
because, as usual, several of its episodes are idle and ex-
trinsic in respect of our proper purpose. The Castle of
all Desire moved near or far upon the confused horizon
of adventure, and at a certain point Perceval reached a
river, beyond which he was assured that the bourne rose up
grandly, in a rich and peopled land ; but he could find
no means of crossing. The day passed from noon to
vespers, and still on the further side he came to a vacant
palace, beautiful exceedingly in situation, moult Men seant,
but now standing drearily in ruins. There he found a
maiden who was prepared to show him a place of cross-
ing and mounted her mule for the purpose, but her in-
tention was only to drown him. Unless we can connect
this incident with something which will follow presently,
I find nothing therein except an unmeaning hindrance,
and the same may be said of an episode which occurs
hereabouts in certain manuscripts, being the meeting
between Perceval and a huntsman who reproached him
for the fatality of the unasked question at the Graal
Castle. It shows only that the rumour of the ill-starred
visit had gone about the district, which was acquainted
otherwise, and too well, with the sorrows of the Holy
House and their effects beyond the precincts. As regards
the maiden and the mule, I would note further that in
the Conte del Graal there is a curse on Logres which
occupies a middle term between times of adventure and
times of enchantment, and one inference may be that
Perceval had fallen into the hands of a water-fairy,
belonging to the kelpie type, as the malice of an earthly
maiden could be assumed scarcely in connection with
such a meeting between complete strangers ; or — that
which is still more probable — the brief occurrence may be
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
due only to the sporadic invention of the writer. In
any case, the Knight, having been better counselled,
learned of a ford, and so entered presumably on the
direct road which led, by the hypothesis, to the desired
House of Great Hallows. Yet he was still far from his
term, and many adventures in the vicinity intervened
without him reaching the goal. First among these was
a visit to another deserted castle — such desolation being
perhaps a part of the curse — and therein he found the
chess-board of which we have heard something in the
metamorphoses and adventures of the Welsh Peredur.
Here it was no hideous damosel who came in to upbraid
him, but a maid of great beauty, who rose from the midst
of the lake into which Perceval had proposed to cast the
board and pieces. The fact that she held his hands
substituted another quest for that of their recovery in the
alternative story. A white stag ranged in the park of
the castle, and if the knight would receive those favours
which her beauty led him to demand he must bring her
the head of this animal, to facilitate which she lent him a
hound with express injunctions to return it. I do not
propose to follow the adventures which arise out of this
undertaking. The favours involved by the covenant
had unhappily been granted to Perceval in the case of
Blanchefleur, though not perhaps when her distress, at
their first meeting, had brought her to his bedside, and
into his arms afterwards, through the whole night. Her
true love was to follow her liberation by him from the
violence of an undesired suitor. But it was granted
indubitably in the plenary sense when he reached her
castle unexpectedly for the second time. Still it was
under circumstances which do not occur commonly in
romances of chivalry unless the consummation of marriage
is intended at the close of all. That she was a bride
elect is clear beyond all in the poem, and in yielding, it
was to her husband that she yielded only, which makes
one later episode in Perceval's story the more iniquitous
for this reason. That Perceval was self-devoted to
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
Blanchefleur follows from the episode of the love-trance,
but his inclinations are variable in the Conte, as they are
in the Welsh story ; for the love of the Lady of the
Chess-board he goes through long-enduring quests which
so end that at length he attains his desires. In all this
there are only two points that concern us — firstly, that
the attainment involves the desertion of Blanchefleur
under circumstances that for the knight are disgraceful ;
and, secondly, that the prolongation of the adventures
which follow the slaying of the stag are due to the
daughter of the Fisher King, or at least in part, and
are designed to punish Perceval for not having asked
the question.
I have said that the locality of the Graal Castle is as
if it were a place in flux ; there is nothing in the opening
of the story to lend colour to the supposition that the
Sacred Vessel and the Mystery and the House of these
were close to the manorial residence and rural retreat
wherein Perceval passed his childhood ; hence it is doubt-
less by reason that the Castle was here to-day and gone
to-morrow that they are brought suddenly into com-
parative proximity. Perceval was still in the course
of his stag adventures and still seeking the prize which
was to follow their completion ; still also he was hearing
casually concerning the Graal, or at least was in occasional
speculation regarding its whereabouts ; when he found
himself, without expectation and without intention, at the
door of his old home, for the first time only in ten
years. There he entered, there he tarried but too briefly,
and there he met with his sister — of whom Chretien
knows nothing, even as Gautier elects to ignore entirely
the cousin-german of the earlier poet. He seems, how-
ever, to have been following some earlier stage of the
legend, to which the Longer Prose Perceval and the Great
Quest also conform, and in that last and glorious text
the personality of the sister is exalted to a high grade of
sanctity, of which we find nothing but the first traces —
for the first traces are present — in the account of Gautier.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Herein she is a spirit of recollection and a meditative
recluse —
" Une moult tr£s cointe puciele,
Blanc com flours en may novele."
But she is clothed richly withal and encompassed by a
fair retinue, so living sad and unfriended in the wood-
land, lamenting the loss of her brother, of whose fate
she had heard nothing. When Perceval declared himself
there was great joy between them, and of her he learned
the particulars of their mother's death, through the love
and the loss of him. Together they visited a hermit
uncle who is not to be identified with the former,
being on the father's side ; to him Perceval made his
confession — though of all prayers he knew only the
Pater noster — heard at his celebration a Mass of the
Holy Ghost, knelt at the tomb of their mother, and of
his uncle prayed piteously that he might learn con-
cerning the Graal and the other Hallows. But his uncle
would tell him nothing at that time, though he gave
him high instruction regarding holy mysteries of re-
ligion. That the heart of Perceval was not reached,
his reverence notwithstanding, was too soon made evident
by the fact that he bequeathed his sister to renewed
isolation, with a mere promise to return which is never
fulfilled, and soon or some time afterwards he was in a
position — as we shall see — to claim and receive his dues
from the Lady of the Chess-board.
Neither sin of concupiscence nor sin of desertion have
disqualified him for the Quest of the Graal in the opinion
of Gautier, and he was still less or more on that Quest
when he came to a Castle of Maidens, who were reputed
to have raised the beautiful edifice with their own hands —
" Ains le fisent . mi . pucieles,
Moult avenans et moult tres bieles."
Of these things he heard the story, though he was weary
and looked rather for rest. So was he delivered to his
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
slumber, but the place was all work of faerie, and he
reposed in enchantment that night. Faerie houses are,
however, like faerie gold — dead leaves and dry in the
morning, or mere shadow and rainbow semblance which
dissolve in the eastern light. So Perceval woke in a
meadow with an oak murmuring above him. From all
this there follows nothing, but it is designed that the next
adventure should take him a further step in the direction
of his term. It seems that in the neighbourhood of the
Graal Castle there was always a river to cross, and as on
the first occasion he met with a lady and a mule from whom
followed his destruction almost, so now there was another
maiden with a similar beast in her charge, thus creating
a kind of equilibrium between false and true assistance.
The story is very long, and much of it is outside the
object, but it may be reduced under three heads: (i)
Perceval was riding with the lady, whom he lost at night
in the forest. Alone and so lost, he beheld a great light
— very clear and very resplendent — but it was followed
by tempest. (2) In the morning he recovered the damosel,
who said that it was the light of the Graal, which the
Rich King Fisher was accustomed to carry in the forest,
so that no infernal temptation should have power
over him. In the Conte therefore, as in the Quest of
Galahad, the Graal goes about, but it is not for the same
reason. (3) The maiden described the Vessel as that
which contained the glorious blood of the King of Kings
which was received therein as He hung upon the cross.
This is rather the account of the Vulgate Merlin than of
Robert de Borron, but the distinction is one of detail,
and it follows that the Early History which was known
to Gautier was that of a relic of the Passion. (4) More
than this the lady would not reveal, because it was a thing
too secret for dame or damosel to recount ; it was also
a tale of terror, though a man of holy life might express
the marvels. (5) That which she could do she would
do, however — namely, lend him her white mule — the
beast which another romance declares to be on God's
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
side — and she would lend him also her ring, by which
the mule was governed. Thus assisted, he would be able
to cross a certain bridge of glass, from which he might
travel direct to the King's Castle. Thereafter the mule
would return of itself. He was not all the same destined
to continue the journey far beyond the waterside. He
was riding the mule, and leading his horse by the bridle,
when he encountered a knight who gave him news of a
tourney about to be held by King Arthur, and — ignoring
his original resolve — he turned aside from the straight
path to attend it. The digression delayed his achieve-
ment, but it left him the best knight of the world, and
this was a condition of the achievement. It did not,
however, meet the views of the damosel who was owner
of the mule and the ring, for she reappeared and de-
manded their return, on ascertaining that his Quest was
not achieved. They were both delivered, and thereafter
— without salutation or farewell — he was left to shift as
he might on the way, now all unknown, to the Holy
House. It was at this time, as if once more without
God in the world, that his road took him to the Castli
of the Chess-board, for during all these scenes and times
he had carried the stag's head and the dog of the damosel.
The term of this foolish business should have increased
the difficulties of his Quest, but — on the contrary — the
lady was to a certain extent his conductress in place of
the maiden of the mule, for she it was who took him
again to the waterside and to a great boat there at hand
which carried him — horse and all — to the opposite shore,
beyond which stretched that broad way which led to the
Court of King Fisher.
The subsequent occurrences are all intended to connect
intimately with his arrival thereat and with the Rite of
Questioning which is his prime object, but we shall see
in their later understanding that they are fantastic rather
than important, which also appears on their surface.
He found a child of apparently five years old, clothed
in rich vestments and seated on a branch of a tree
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
higher than any lance could reach. Of him Perceval,
now full of his mission, inquired concerning the Fisher
King but was told only that if he would learn news
which might prove good and pleasant he must go to the
Mount Dolorous, after which the speaker put a period
to further questioning by ascending higher in the tree
and thence vanishing. Perceval reached the mountain
and met with a maid coming down on a palfrey who
counselled him against the adventure, but he began
the ascent and at the summit found fifteen crosses, of
which five were white, five red and five blue. These
encircled a pillar, to which he must fasten his steed.
To fail was to lose reason. The achievement seems
childish, but it was a proof of valour devised of old
by Merlin in order that the flower of chivalry should
alone serve King Arthur, and the maid who told this
story was Merlin's daughter, of whom we find nothing
otherwise in the canonical romances of the Graal. Seeing
that very few knights of the Round Table ever heard of
Mount Dolorous and much less of the testing, the
account seems an idle invention, but it is regarded as
important for early Arthurian history. Perceval being
still on his journey, at the conclusion of this adventure,
came next to a great tree which was illuminated by
innumerable candles, like a high altar at the exposition
of the Most Holy Sacrament. It was the spectacle of
a moment only, for the lights vanished on his approach,
and he found himself at a wonderful chapel, where a
dead knight lay in repose on the altar and a black
hand, appearing behind the altar, extinguished one
great light thereon. The significance of these things
appears in the sequel and does not signify especially.
In fine, Perceval arrived at the Graal Castle, wherein
he found the King and told him of his latest adventures,
namely, those on his way to the Castle. The Hallows
appeared, and for the first time in the poem the expres-
sion Saint Greal is used in connection with the actual
vision of the object. When the procession had passed
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and repassed, Perceval asked, as we know, the required
questions, whereat the King told him that these were
great matters, and in the first place he recounted the
meaning of the child seated on the branch of that
tree which the knight passed on his way thither.
Perceval did not learn what he wanted, because of his
sins, and the episode as a whole indicated that the
thought of man should be raised towards his Creator —
an allegorical trifle which is after the manner of Masonic
teaching, as this appears on the surface, or much ado
about little. Before he could hear further Perceval was
invited to piece the broken sword together, which he did,
apparently by the power of his magnetism as the best
knight in the world. He left only a slight crevice at
the point of junction, which I should account for as
signifying that other point in time at which the sin
of sense entered into his life — but this is without pre-
judice to the explanation provided in one of the sequels
which stand over for consideration. The partial success
led the Keeper of the Hallows to hail Perceval as one
of the lords of the House, though he was told at the
same time that the Quest was yet unfinished. As Gautier
dwells more especially on the resoldering of the Broken
Sword, it may be inferred that what still remained was
the perfect completion of this work. The next teller
of the story will be found, however, to import another
element, which so far may have been an implicit of the
poem but has not been explicated. For the rest, Gautier
explains nothing concerning that withdrawn and abdicated
king, of whom we hear something in Chretien, nor does
he make more than the one reference, which I have cited,
to the daughter of the Rich Fisher, except that to all
appearance she continued her office as Bearer of the
Holy Graal.
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
§ D. — THE CONCLUSION OF MANESSIER
There is a disposition to think that the extension of
Gautier broke off in the middle of a sentence, which was
brought by the poet who followed him to its due point,
and the narrative continues thereafter, in his hands re-
maining to the very end. This poet was Manessier.
We have, however, to remember that at or about the
alleged break there intervened another singer, who in-
tended, almost certainly, to furnish an alternative or inde-
pendent conclusion, the term of which may have been
by possibility at the penultimate completed sentence of
Gautier's version, wherein the Fisher King calls Perceval
to enter within the fold of the house —
" Sires soies de ma maison,
Je vos mec tout en abandon
Quan que jou ai, sans mil dangler ;
A tous jours vos arai plus cier
Que nul homme qui ja mais soit."
It would be in this case much the same ending as that
of the Berne Perceval. Alternatively, there may have
been some further extension which is not now extant, or
Gerbert, on his own part, may have failed to complete
as he proposed. I speak with considerable diffidence,
because the only editor of the text has given such a
vague account of that which preceded the interpolation
and followed it that it is impossible to decide whether
he has mistaken the line of Gautier, which is said to be
the point of intervention, or whether the experiment of
the Broken Sword is repeated a second time — with
glaring inconsequence — and proves a failure, soon after
it was resoldered in Gautier's text. Again, the welcome
among his household by the Fisher King is repeated at
the end in the one manuscript which gives — according
to the editor — the narrative of Gerbert in extenso. There
is, of course, another alternative which would exonerate
219
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
M. Potvin — the editor in question — and this is that the
scribe of the codex brought in the Gerbert version at an
arbitrary point without reference to that which went
before and came after in the text of Gautier. The two
poets are in any case of one mind as to the unfinished
state of the Quest, and so also is Manessier, but the
latter is of opinion evidently that Perceval has accom-
plished enough to have, on taking up the thread of the
narrative, as much information concerning the Graal
and Lance as he intends to provide under any circum-
stances whatever, together with so exhaustive a history
of the Broken Sword that the hero shall be equipped fully
for the undertaking which remains to be accomplished. I
have said that Gautier is concerned more especially with
the resoldering of this weapon, and it is out of the same
talisman that Manessier obtains his keynote, or that which
concerns himself in the palmary sense — namely, the ven-
geance-legend. It was the sword which inflicted the
dolorous stroke and by fraud encompassed the destruc-
tion of the king's brother. It was the sword which
wounded the king himself by a chance in which lurked a
fatality, and his healing depended, as we know, on the visi-
tation of tardy wrath and delayed justice upon him who
used and misused the weapon. With the explanation of
the Graal and the Lance we are already acquainted, but
the inter-relation between the two Hallows is much closer
in Manessier than it is in some other versions ; as the
Sacred Spear penetrated the side of Christ, the Graal was
raised up to receive it, and the historic account which
follows shows that the poet was acquainted with some
early rendering of the Book of the Holy Graal which differed
materially from the now extant form, as it knew nothing
of the Second Joseph — the son of Joseph of Arimathaea,
to whom such prominence is given in the later text. It
was the elder or, for the early version, the only Joseph
of the Graal, who brought the Hallows into Britain, who
erected the Manor or Castle in which the King was now
speaking to Perceval, and the speaker was of his own
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
lineage. If there were any comparative connection in the
romances, it would follow that the Castle was Corbenic
and that the king was Pelles ; but as the latter is not
certainly this personage, so in the former case there is
tolerable reason to suppose that the nameless House does
not correspond to the mighty pile built of old by a con-
verted pagan ruler, for which he was visited so heavily.
After allowance has been made for several obvious dis-
parities, it remains of no little importance that the early
history of the Graal, so far as it is given in the Conte, is
not that of Robert de Borron but of the putative Walter
Map, and that in the sequence of texts as we have them
the source of this Early History leads up to the Quest of
Galahad and not to that of Perceval. Apart from the
German cycle, for which there appear to be two sources
— the one being in Northern French and the other in
something so far untranslatable — the root-matter of
Graal history was a text which corresponded of all things
most closely with the metrical romance of De Borron.
It was sometimes reflected through that medium and
at others through the early form of the Book of the Holy
Graal — and this history was one of Christian symbolism
and religious legend, not one of folk-lore — by the elements
of which it was contaminated in the course of develop-
ment in romance.
Perceval, on the great night of his visit to the Graal
Castle, heard other wonders than those of the Relics of
the Passion and the Sword of wrath and vengeance. He
heard that the maiden who carried the Graal was of royal
lineage and so also was she who bore the salver, but the
former was the King's daughter. He heard that the
illuminated tree which he passed in his journey was the
Tree of Enchantment, where the fairies assemble ; for the
powers of the height and the powers of the deep and
the powers of the intermediate world encompassed the
Graal Castle, that the times of enchantment, times of
adventure, times of wonder might be illustrated by abun-
dant pageants. He heard, in fine, of the Chapel and the
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Black Hand, to which I have alluded as a tale of little
meaning, wherein the Graal has no part, and there is no
need to repeat the explanation here.
After all these narratives, Perceval covenanted to visit
the death of the King's brother on the person who accom-
plished it. On the morning following he took his leave,
commending his host to God and refusing all invitations
to tarry. Perhaps Manessier did not know what to
do in order to retard, for the purpose of story-
telling, the accomplishment of his Vengeance Quest.
Alternatively, perhaps he regarded it as a point of honour
to follow his precursors by giving an inordinate space to
the adventures of Gawain, with whom he couples those
of Saigremor, another knight of fame in Arthurian
romance. In any case, there are various digressions at
this point which account for one half of the poem.
When the story returns ultimately to Perceval he was
again in the Chapel which he had visited previously —
that of the Black Hand, the extinguished candle and the
corpse on the altar. He did battle with and expelled
a demon, purified the place and slept therein. The next
day he assisted three hermits to bury the body of the
person whom the Black Hand had slain. All this not-
withstanding— indeed, perhaps because of it — for a con-
siderable part of his mission the powers of the deep
attacked him. On one occasion the Accuser, in the form
of a horse, endeavoured to carry him to hell, but he was
saved by the sign of the Cross. Later on he arrived at
that river which he had crossed originally, and there the
demon sought once more to deceive him, assuming the
guise of Blanchefleur coming to him in a wherry. But at
the right moment another vessel appeared, with sails of
samite, bearing a holy man, and Perceval took refuge
therein.
It is evident that the story has reached that point when
its proper term is on the threshold rather than in sight
merely, and the various delays which intervene can be
dealt with in a few words, if we omit miscellaneous
222
The Early Epochs of the Quest
adventures which serve no important object, as they are
nothing to do with the Graal. The most purposeful
of all was the arrival of a messenger from Blanchefleur,
who was again in peril, and so he paid his third visit to
Beaurepaire, which he delivered duly and again departed
from the lady, but this time in all chastity and reserve.
She who had declared to him her love, now in the far
past, she who expected to wed him, was destined to see
him no more. The next most important episode was
a stormy encounter with Hector of the Round Table, as
a result of which both were destroyed nearly ; but in
the dark of the midnight there shone a great light about
them, which was the Graal carried by an angel, and
thereby they were again made whole. It follows, once
more, that here, as in the Quest of Galahad, the Graal
was going about, at least on occasion, and we have had
an instance previously in connection with the wanderings
of the Fisher King. Like all hallows the efficacy of which
is transcendent and even of the absolute degree, there
was no active ministry on the part thereof and nothing
was done by the angel. He moved simply about them,
holding the Precious Vessel, and their wounds, with the
pains, left them. Doubtless after such manner was the
company of the Blessed Joseph sustained and fed in the
wilderness.
After this miraculous healing, Perceval, departing
from Hector, as those who after great experiences have
quenched all hatred in their heart, continued his way, as
we may suppose, concerned now only with the accom-
plishment of his mission ; and so in the fulness of time
he reached that castle wherein there dwelt the knight
who slew the brother of the Fisher King. Sorrow and
outrage had the evil master of chivalry brought to his
intended victim, and more even than that to the keeper
of the Sacred Vessel. Why it had entailed such con-
sequences nobody knows — perhaps also no one would
care to speculate. The Graal had healed Perceval, and it
had healed Hector, even in the absence of any desert on
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
his own part, for he was the unworthy kinsman of
Lancelot ; but its own custodian it could not cure of the
wound which a mere accident had inflicted. After a long
encounter, Perceval despatched the worker of this mis-
chief and started on his return journey to the Graal
Castle, carrying the head of the destroyer with him. His
mission once accomplished, all the hard and doubtful
roads ran behind the hoofs of Perceval's horse ; all the
hindrances were taken out of the way. Of that way he
knew nothing probably, and there was no need that he
should. To the right he went and the left, with a
certain sense of questing ; the moons of the magical
summer waxed and waned above him ; and all suddenly
the Castle rose up before him. A herald on the walls
without beheld his approach and hurried to the Master
of the House, not so much with the news of his coming
as of that which he bore slung from the front of his
saddle ; whereupon the Fisher King rose up healed — with
a great cry. Perceval presented his terrible gift, and it was
fixed on the summit of the tower belonging to that Castle
which so far was a place of vengeance rather than of
mercy. Thus finished the last and crowning adventure.
Whether it was the implicit of Chretien that the question
properly put would have restored all things within and
without the Castle we cannot say ; perhaps it would
only have led to the vengeance quest, but again we can-
not say. There is nothing in Chretien to make us infer
that quest and in the Didot Perceval — the prose romance
which corresponds in the French cycle most nearly to the
first portion of the Conte del Graal — the whole mission is
one of asking and receiving a true answer. The relation-
ship between the King and the knight was now for the
first time declared by one to another ; the King appointed
his lands to the hero, promising to make him King in
succession at Pentecost — as one who devises to an heir,
or perhaps as if he also were a priest having power
to consecrate. To this, however, Perceval would not
accede so long as his uncle was alive, and he was also
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
under covenant to visit the court of King Arthur, which
he departed to fulfil accordingly. He was still there
when a maiden arrived with the news that the Fisher
King was dead, and that there was a vacancy of the royal
office in the House of the Graal.
King Arthur accompanied Perceval to the Castle with
all the chivalry of the Round Table — remaining a full
month and being served daily by the Sacred Vessel. It
does not appear who consecrated Perceval, whether this
was effected, in the ordinary way, by a prelate of the
church, or whether the office itself carried with it its
own anointing. The text says only that he was
crowned at the Feast of All Saints. After seven
long years of reign in peace he bequeathed the lands
in turn, and the official part of his royalty, to the King
of Maronne, who had married the daughter of King
Fisher ; but the Hallows he did not bequeath. He re-
tired into a hermitage, whither the Graal followed him.
By a departure from tradition, he was consecrated acolyte,
sub-deacon, deacon, and, in five years, he was ordained
priest and sang Mass. Thereafter so did he serve God
and so love Him that he was called at length from this
world into the joy of Paradise. During the last period
of his earthly life one codex says that he was fed only by
the Holy Graal — that is to say, by the Eucharist.
§ E. — THE ALTERNATIVE SEQUEL OF GERBERT
It will be seen that in his wonderful kingdom
Perceval had entirely neglected Blanchefleur, who is
no longer even mentioned : he went into his own,
and his own seem to have received him with no
interrogation of the past. Had his sins been scarlet,
the fulfilment of the vengeance mission and the conse-
quent healing of the King would have made them white
as snow, so far as we can follow Manessier ; and yet in
some obscure manner the poet knew that the things which
225 P
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
he dealt in were sealed with holiness and that the office
of the Warden, if it did not begin with priesthood, and
all its sanctity, must end therein. The sense of poetical
justice might have suggested another conclusion, and
so did, but this was not to the mind of Manessier.
There is, as we are aware, a long and long sequel by
another writer which interpenetrates the last lines of
Gautier, and it is a romance truly which is full of
entrancements and hints of spiritual meaning. It has
been summarised very fully indeed by the one editor of
the Conte del Graal, but it has never been printed in
full, as it demands and deserves. I do not know
what Gerbert thought of the chessboard episode and
that which followed thereafter as the term of the
whole adventure. He seems to have isolated it from
his mind and thus contrived to ignore it. Certainly a
subsequent action, or a denial, as I should say rather,
which he attributes to his hero, seems to assume tacitly
the previous continence of his life. Putting aside this
question of an implicit, there are three express pre-
occupations to which the poem confesses : (a) that the
desertion of Perceval's mother was an offence which
called for expiation ; (£) that the neglect of his sister
must be overglossed by proper care in the future ; and
(c) that the rest of his life must atone for all his pre-
vious deficiences in respect of Blanchefleur, who — as I
do not doubt that he determined in his secret mind —
must be united through him with the Graal. Of such
was his programme, and after what manner he fulfilled
it can be told shortly. Perceval had reason to say in
his heart : mea culpa^ mea culpa, mea maxima culpa — for
three offences and of these one was the greatest. I
have indicated that in the midst of the editor's con-
fusion, or at least as the allocation is found in the printed
text, it is difficult to understand whether it is assumed
by Gerbert that the Broken Sword had been resoldered
partially before he begins his narrative, but even in
this case it was clear to Gautier that the task of his
226
The Early Epochs of the Quest
hero was unfinished. That which he intended to do
with him subsequently, there is, of course, no means
of knowing ; what he ought to have done, Gerbert
has designed to illustrate. Perceval was to be treated,
in the first instance, precisely as we shall find that
Gautier presents the treatment of Gawain over his
particular failure — he was not to know the truth
concerning the Graal — the mystery, that is to say, of
all secrecy. A state more approaching perfection was
to deserve so high a prize. The King, who pronounced
the judgment, consoled him, and him counselled, after
which the knight was left to his repose in the holy
and glorious Castle. The night of sleep was a night
also which was intended to recall him to the sense of
his first duty. The clear strokes of a clock, pro-
claiming the hour of midnight, awoke him ; he saw
a great light and he heard sweet singing, after which
came the voice of one who was unseen, warning him
concerning his sister, who was encompassed by great
danger in the manorial house of their mother. He
passed again into deep wells of slumber, and again
— but now in the morning — he awoke, as others had
awakened previously, to find himself lying on green-
sward, since the Castle had passed for the time being
beyond the witness of the senses. He mounted his
horse, which stood caparisoned and ready ; he went
forward, and soon — as it might seem, suddenly — a
wonder of great wonders awaited him. It took the
form of crystal walls, within which he heard all manner
of instruments making a joyful music. The door in the
hither wall being fastened, he smote it three times with
increasing vehemence, using his sword for the purpose.
It should be noted that this weapon neither was nor
could have been the Graal Hallow, but on the third
occasion it broke with a great clatter. Thereupon the
door moved back, and one who was in white shining
appeared and challenged. For Perceval it was a rebuff
in more senses than he could understand at the moment,
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and though he entreated earnestly, not only was he
denied entrance, but he was told by one who knew
all his failure and success at the Graal Castle, that
this his business with the sword must cost him another
seven years of quest and exile. Apparently for the
King's sake and the relief of him, he had striven in
the first place, though the measure of his intention
was small; now it was his own purification that was
the chief work in hand. So he knocked and he did
not enter, even as in the youth and inexperience of
his brave spirit he saw the Pageant and the Hallows,
but asked nothing concerning them. On both occa-
sions, it was accounted to him as if he had sinned
with knowledge. The truth is that the counsels of
prudence do not obtain in the presence of the Mysteries,
nor do the high conventions of good conduct, at least
utterly. This was in the earlier case, and in the present
one, while it is true that the Kingdom of Heaven is
taken by violence, no one can enter unwarranted into
the secret sanctuaries that have been instituted on
earth to guard the memorials of the Kingdom which
as yet is not upon earth, though with harp and viol
and lute, and with all manner of music and psaltery,
we pray that it may come quickly.
What, it will be asked, was this enclosure — within
walls as the luminous shadow of the Jerusalem which is
above ? What manner of castle was this which resounded
with the hallowings and enchantments of melody ? Was
it not, indeed, the Graal Castle, to which he had returned
unwittingly by a devious way ? According to the answer
which the text furnishes, it was the Earthly Paradise, but
another text tells us that among the added names of
the Graal Shrine there was to be included the Castle of
Eden, that it was the Castle of Joy also — as of music for
ever sounding — and that behind it there was the Earthly
Paradise, one of the rivers of which encircled the sacred
enclosure. Therefore I leave those who will to draw the
conclusion which pleases them, knowing, as at least I do,
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
that places of this unquestionable order may be now on
the crown of a causeway which the sea lashes, and again
" •!• clos de mur fait a crestiax."
Perceval retired discounselled, but had he been advanced
further in the knowledge of secret things, he would have
recognised perhaps that there was encouragement and
high hope which he could put to his heart because he
had not been met by swords of fire, keeping the way of
the Tree of Life, but by one in his own likeness, exalted
gloriously, who had said to him : Not yet ! Moreover,
at the end of the terse interlocutory discourse, he was
given what is termed in the poem a Brief, Charter or
Warranty, which — so long as he bore it — would ensure
that through all his subsequent exile he should suffer no
grievous harm, for thereby was he rendered invincible.
We see in this manner that all kinds of miracle in medi-
cine and every form of palladium were available there
and here for knights of quest and pilgrimage ; that they
seemed to be reflections or radiations from the central
star of the Holy Graal ; and hence that when he who
was served thereby and maintained thereof could find not
even a palliative in its vision and mystery, the explana-
tion can only be that his sickness was not of this world.
Thus equipped, Perceval resumed his pilgrimage, much
as the novice in some temple of the Instituted Mysteries
circumambulates the Hall of Reception under the guidance
of its Wardens, having only a vague notion of what is
the intention and the term, but still progressing thereto.
Again the road was strewn with wonders before him, but
to his exaltation on this occasion. The world itself had
assumed an aspect of May-time on a morning of Fairy-
land, and hold and keep and city poured out their gar-
landed trains, as with bells and banners and thuribles, to
honour and acclaim him. Of the reason no one knew
less than Perceval, or divined as little, but he had asked
the question at the Castle, and although it had not been
answered, although he had learned nothing of Graal and
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Lance, and was therefore less instructed than Gawain, the
interdict had been lifted from Nature, the winter was over
and done, and all the cushats and turtles in all green
places of the land — and all the ballad voices — broke into
joy and melody, as if the Rite of Marriage had been
celebrated between Heaven and Earth. He was clothed
at castles in rich vestments, and from high-born maiden
to simple peasant all hearts were his and all welcome.
It must be said at this point that we know little, and
so little, of Gerbert that it may be reasonably a matter
for speculation whether the place at which his sequel is
introduced by the scribes of certain codices corresponds
or not to his intention. There are some respects in
which it could be allocated better if it were possible to
suppose that it was part only of a Graal poem which was
meant to follow immediately from the section of Chre-
tien ; a very pertinent case in favour of this view is the
palmary fact that Gerbert seems to assume almost certainly
the virginity of Perceval up to, and, as we shall see, after
his marriage night, which supposition is doubly impossible
in view of the Gautier section. It must further be noted
that in one remarkable reference to Crestiens de Troie, he
speaks of himself as the poet who resumed the task, fol-
lowing the true history : —
" Si com li livres li aprent,
Ou la matiere en est escripte."
I feel that in making this suggestion I am exceeding my
proper province, which is not that of textual criticism,
and I recognise that it has its difficulties, assuming, as it
does, that the Gerbert sequel must have existed in a much
more extended form, because at the opening Perceval is
at the Graal Castle for a second time, which is either
pursuant to the account of Gautier or to some unknown
portion of his own narrative. If, however, he followed
Gautier, then he chose to forget or ignore him at several
crucial moments. Sometimes he seems to forget Chretien
himself, for except on this hypothesis it is difficult to
230
The Early Epochs of the Quest
understand his introduction of another Broken Sword,
being that which was shattered on the door of the Earthly
Paradise. Now we have, in all respects, to remember
that the putative Hallow which causes this confusion is
in the position that we should expect it to occupy, seeing
that it has no true place in the Legend of the Holy Graal.
Not only does its history differ in every quest, but within
the limits of the Conte del Graal it is contradictory under
circumstances which exclude one another. At the poem's
very inception the weapon is adjudged to Perceval and
he carries it away. In certain codices the only further
reference made to the Hallow by Chretien is found in
the warning which the questing knight receives from his
cousin-german immediately after his departure from the
Castle ; in others we hear how the Sword splinters in
the hands of Perceval, and thereafter how it is restored
to the Castle. It is there, in any case, not only on the
hero's revisit but long previously — in connection with the
arrival of Gawain. Manessier tells a story concerning it
from which it follows that in breaking it occasioned the
wounding of the King at a period which was antecedent
to all the quests. Therefore it could not have been at
any time offered to Perceval, but must have remained
in the Castle, with its resoldering always as the test of
success in the case of each questing knight. Now, either
Chretien had conceived a different history of the Hallow
or he told the wrong story, for the cousin-german of
Perceval testifies in his poem that the Rich King Fisher
was wounded in the thigh with a spear. When Ger-
bert intervened he left Chretien's intention dubious, and
substituted another sword, which was not a Hallow,
though, like that of his predecessor, it was one that had
been forged specially — would break in one peril only
and must be re-soldered where it was made. After the
triumph of his welcome, as related already, Perceval
came to a castle in which the smithy was set up under the
guard of serpents, for there were reasons why the crafts-
man who forged the weapon did not wish it to be mended,
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and the duty of the serpents was to destroy any one who
brought the pieces to the smithy. These reasons are not
explained by Gerbert, but — as we have seen — in certain
codices of Chretien the life of the smith is somehow de-
pendent on the sword, and its reforging foreshadows his
death approaching. If we can suppose that Gerbert's con-
tinuation began at a much earlier point than is now estab-
lished, some explanation might be possible, though his
own evidence seems to be against this view. Perceval con-
quered the serpents, and the weapon was therefore re-
forged. It does not appear to serve him in any special
event subsequently, and as thus nothing follows from
the episode we must conclude that its introduction is
idle, that in this respect Gerbert did not know what to
do with the materials which had come into his hands ;
and this is perhaps the conclusion that we should desire
in respect of the Sword.
The next episode in Gerbert is a kind of addendum to
that of Mount Dolorous in Manessier, and to this again
no consequence attaches, except that it is an accident by
which the hero is brought to Caerleon and to the court
of King Arthur, when the poet gives us a new and revo-
lutionary explanation concerning the Siege Perilous of
Arthurian romance. The Siege is a decorative chair
of jewelled gold sent from Fairyland — possibly that
of Avalon — for occupation by the best knight in the
world, and by him only with safety. For others who
sit therein, the earth opens and swallows them. This
chair is taken by Perceval, as at a great Rite of
Exaltation, and the earth does open ; but the Siege
remains suspended in middle air, and the result of
this achievement is that the previous ill-starred heroes,
who have been engulphed but not destroyed, are re-
stored to light and air. Perceval's next adventure is
intended to illustrate his continence when tempted by
a demon in the guise of a very fair woman. He
emerged unsullied, and reached the abode of his sister,
to her unspeakable joy and comfort. They visited the
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
tomb of their mother, and then set forth together. Some
time after they arrived at the Castle of Maidens, where
Perceval in fine left her in hands of safety. Here there
was another office of healing, which is of medicine rather
than of anodyne ; but though all the ways of wonder
lead to and from the Castle of the Holy Graal, the
King of that Castle knew too well the fatality by
which he was encompassed to seek, for he would have
sought vainly, his relief thereat. Within the merciful
precincts of her new asylum Perceval's sister was en-
rolled henceforth as a ministering spirit, and thereat
the questing knight learned something more concerning
the antecedents of his Quest and also of his own family.
The Castle of Maidens received wanderers, but sheltered
in its ordinary course women only, and a reverend
dame — under whose rule the whole company abode —
declared herself a kinswoman of Perceval, being his
mother's cousin. The name of his mother was Philoso-
fine, and they two had entered Logres together, carrying
the Sacred Hallow ; but this event of the past was
evidently a part of the historical mystery, and was not
to be declared even to the knight of Quest until he
had proved himself. He knew now that even from his
very beginning he was a scion of the Sacred House, and
he might have rested content in his heart that the
house would at length receive him. He knew also
that it was the sinful state of the land which had
caused the Holy Graal to be placed in a concealed
sanctuary under the ward of the good King Fisher.
Meanwhile the closing had been taken in the degree
of his duty towards his sister, and, in the next place he
was called to a subsidiary work in the region of filial
duty. With whatever offence he could be charged in
respect of his mother, she was past the reach of his
atonement ; but his father in chivalry, now in the
distress of sorcery — as at the hands of the sorceresses
of Gloucester in the Welsh romance — demanded his
vengeance. This incident is one of many which would
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
make the investigation of Gerbert's materials a quest
of high enchantment if only the road were open. Of
the duty which was thus imposed and accepted in all
the honour of his knighthood, Perceval acquitted him-
self with credit, his brief from the Earthly Paradise
coming to his aid, and the providence attached thereto ;
though — differing from the putative archaic romance — the
event did not lead to the utter destruction of the people of
the witch-craft, but of their military hirelings only. The
episode, however, has a second object, more important to
Perceval than itself, which is to aid in recalling a re-
lationship between Blanchefleur and his father in Chivalry
— as the same is recorded by Chretien — and so forward
to the root-matter of the poem, which is the marriage
of Perceval. As regards this marriage there are two
noticeable points, outside the fact that the union itself
was the head and crown of exile ordeal. There is
(a) the ideal set before the poet, which was to preserve
the virginity of Perceval till he had accomplished the
Quest of the Graal ; and (£) the promise that at some
time subsequently — when that was removed which hin-
dered the consummation of the marriage in chastity —
there should arise, as issue from those high nuptials,
the mystic genealogy of the Swan Knight, whereby
the Holy Sepulchre would be delivered. It is for this
reason that — by a convenant which was made between
them — Blanchefleur remained a maid on the night of
her bridal. Of such was the marriage of Perceval,
and thereafter he who was lord henceforth of all her
lands, holding the sworn fealty of many princes and
barons, went forth again into the world to prosecute
the Great Quest. Of the virgin bride we hear nothing
further, but there can be no doubt that if he had
finished with her, as he seems to have planned, Gerbert
would have recounted, and did perhaps, the re-union of
Blanchefleur and Perceval.
I do not conceive that there is any object in pro-
longing this summary of a narrative which is protracted
234
The Early Epochs of the Quest
in various ways, but has reached its proper term. Some
of its later, and, as one would say, redundant episodes
occur or recur in the Longer Prose Perceval, but we
have no criterion of judgment by which to decide
whether one drew from another or both from that
common source to which they appeal both. At the
end of his probation Perceval is again at the Graal
Castle, ostensibly for the third time, and the last
lines of Gerbert repeat, as they stand in my text,
those which are last of Gautier. I have stated my
opinion already, under the necessary reserves, that
Gerbert carried his sequel further and produced a
conclusion which did not impose upon Perceval —
under the genius of Manessier — two other pilgrimages
outwards, but, as in the Parsifal of Wolfram, reconciled
his own institution in the Graal Castle with the healing
and concurrent prolongation of the old king's life. As
regards the sources of the Conte del Graal in what is
termed early historical matter, it is only at a late
period that we reach accounts which are not interpo-
lated obviously, and then they connect with the Book
of the Holy Graal and not with the simpler history of
De Borron. This is true of Manessier and true in
part of Gerbert, but on the understanding that the
story of Perceval's mother — in the latter case — does
not represent any other extant narrative, more especially
in respect of the circumstances under which the Fisher
King became the guardian of the Graal. On the other
hand, Gautier gives a few indications which are of the
matter of the putative Walter Map.
§ F. — IN WHICH SIR GAWAIN is CONSIDERED BRIEFLY
AS A COMPANION OF THE HOLY QUEST
There are three that give testimony on earth concern-
ing the Mystery of the Graal — Perceval, Bors and Galahad
—and the greatest of these is Galahad. This notwith-
235
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
standing, as there are persons who, through a certain
mental deviation, turn aside from the highways of
Christendom and look for better paths, out of the
beaten track, in the issues of obscure heresy, so it has
happened that scholarship, without setting aside the
great heroes of research, has discovered some vague
predilection for the adventurous and courtly Sir Gawain.
They have been led even to think that he was the
first popular hero of the Great Quest. If the evidence
can be held as sufficient — and it is tolerable in certain
directions — I suppose that I should waste my time
by saying that it does not signify, any more than the
preference of Jewry for Barabbas rather than Christ
could accredit the Jewish robber with a valid or pos-
sible title. In order to strengthen the view, scholarship
has supposed certain speculative versions, now more lost
than regrettable, which present Gawain more fully as the
quest-hero than any document which is extant. In such
event these versions were like the poem of Chretien de
Troyes, as it was judged by Wolfram — that is to say, they
told the wrong story. At the same time there are several
accessory considerations which call for mention. Gawain
was exactly the kind of character who would be disposed
to initiate and undertake all kinds of quests, high and
low. That he was a popular Graal hero might mean
that some of his chroniclers did not see exactly why his
methods and mode of life should create a barrier. It
must be admitted also that for many purposes of the
Greater Mysteries it is possible that the merely continent
man requires a more express preparation than one of
the opposite tendency in certain cases. I think further
that the old romancists had in their minds a distinction
between the continuity of the sin in Lancelot and the
sporadic misdemeanours of Gawain, as also between the
essential gravity of the particular offence in the two con-
trasted instances. There is the fullest evidence of this in
respect of Guinevere, when considered side by side with
other heroines of the cycles. Moreover, the romances
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The Early Epochs of the Quest
reflected the unquestioned concensus of opinion at the
period regarding the barren woman, and it seems clear
that the unfailing fidelity with which plenary favours were
granted by maidens in the matter of a covenant fulfilled,
and the frankness which permitted such favours to rank
as the term of reward, had its root in the sentiment that,
except in houses of religion, the womb which bore no
fruit was under a greater interdict than that which con-
ceived without consecration by the sacred offices of the
Church. This must be remembered when the literature
suggests, as it will, that the chivalry of King Arthur's
court translated in an inverted manner the institutes of
heaven ; that it was not very particular about marrying
and giving in marriage ; and that it seemed to have as-
sumed to itself an indulgence, both general and particular,
to follow the untinctured office of Nature without much
consciousness of a stigma attaching thereto. Finally, it
is just to add that the later romances manifest a set
purpose to depict Gawain in blacker colours exceedingly
than the earlier texts warrant.
For the rest, and from the mystic standpoint, it seems
pertinent to say that while there is no period at which it
was customary on the part of the Church to impose
celibacy as an ideal on those who lived in the world, and
while from most of the higher standpoints the grace of
chastity is less in its simple possession than in its im-
passioned recovery, we have to remember that the great
masters do not marry because of the Divine Union. The
connection in Chretien between Gawain and the Graal
Quest arises out of a challenge which he had accepted to
clear himself of a charge of murder, as to which it was
a matter of agreement that if he could find and bring
back the Lance which bleeds he should be excused from
returning to withstand the ordeal by battle. Out of this
condition certain codices present the visit of Gawain to
the Graal Castle very early in the version of Gautier. He
beheld, firstly, a bier and, secondly, all the Hallows, asked
the required question, and was told by the Royal Warden
237
"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that if he could resolder the Broken Sword he should
know (a) why the beautiful maiden who carried the
Sacred Vessel was dissolved in tears ; (£) why a bier
formed part of the pageant ; and (<:) whose body was laid
thereon. These points are peculiar to Gautier and his
connections. The experiment with the Sword proved,
however, a failure ; Gawain learned nothing ; he fell
asleep after hearing the discourse of the King, who ex-
plained what was wanting in him ; and on awaking next
morning he discovered himself in the open country, with
his horse and his arms close by him. It is obvious that
he had found the Lance, but he had not carried it away,
and for this reason he set out to take up the challenge.
King Arthur, however, intervened, and the matter was
settled in peace.
The codices which embody this account give much
more extended particulars of another visit which was
paid by Gawain to the Castle ; but it is obvious that
they are exclusive mutually, and the alternative texts
which omit the first visit, and determine in a different
sense the question of the accusation and the ordeal, are
for the quest of Gawain the logical and preferable texts.
Second or first, on this occasion, nothing was further
from the mind of the character in chief than to go on
the Quest of the Graal, nor was he concerned with the
covenant of any challenge. He assumed the responsi-
bility of a knight who was slain by a hand invisible when
riding under his safe conduct. The identity of this
knight is never disclosed, but Gawain wore his armour
and was carried by his steed, who had mysterious fore-
knowledge of the way, to a destination of which he him-
self could dream nothing. He arrived at his term in
due course, but what took place was the reception of a
masquerading neophyte, who was unintroduced, un-
warranted and unqualified. In place of being he that
was to come, they had still to look for another ; but
his harness for a moment deceived the company about
him.
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'The Early Epochs of the Quest
Chretien knew nothing of a bier and a dead body, in
that place where the sign of arch-natural life abode in
perpetuity ; those who took up the story in the footsteps
of Gautier knew nothing also, and agreed to ignore his
intimations of unexplained disaster. But Gautier or
another, the bier was again seen at this visit of him who
was unexpected, and a procession of canons and clerks
recited thereover the Holy Office for the Dead, with a
great ceremony of solemn voices intoning. The King
also visited the bier and lamented over it. The pageant
of the Graal was manifested, after the manner which I
have described elsewhere, and Gawain saw it openly. At
the conventional feast it was the Sacred Vessel which
served so far as the food was concerned, but the sacra-
mental communication was in one kind only, since the
wine, as we have seen, was brought round by the butlers.
Gawain, as in the previous case, asked all the necessary
and saving questions, and was invited to solder the Sword,
but he failed, as before, in this ordeal and learned only
concerning its history. A stroke which was dealt there-
with destroyed the realm of Logres and all the surround-
ing country. In the midst of this narrative Gawain fell
asleep at the table, and was left to repose. When he
awoke there was neither hall nor castle, neither King
nor chivalry about him, but a fairly garnished land lying
on the brink of the sea and restored by so much of the
belated question as he had asked the King. The common
folk blessed him, and the common folk accused him,
because he had not finished his work or insured their full
felicity.
Of such is the Quest of Gawain as it appears in the
Conte del Graal^ even as the pillars of a temple which was
never finished. It intervenes between the first and
second visit of Perceval to the High House of the
Hallows, but on Perceval's own Quest it has no effect
whatever, and the narrative of the one ignores that of the
other. It is said in some old fable — which is not, I
think, of the Graal, — that Arthur and Gawain at last re-
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
posed in Fairyland. There are two classes of Knighthood
— that which goes in and returns, and thereof is Ogier ;
that which enters but does not come back evermore, and
thereof is Launfal. Now, Arthur returns in the fulness
of the times that are to come, and, however these dreams
may be, it is certain that the Peace of the King is not the
peace of Gawain. In conclusion as to the Conte del Graal,
after every allowance has been made for one statement
in Chretien, from which it follows that the father of the
Fisher King was, as we have seen, sustained by a Sacred
Host taken from the Holy Graal, the keynote of the
whole cycle is that it has no sacramental connections
such as we find elsewhere in the literature. On this
account, if indeed on no other, the Conte del Graal has
nothing to tell us which signifies in respect of our true
affair, except by way of its echoes and reflections from
sources which do concern us nearly, and are better and
fuller witnesses. It has every title to possess in per-
petuity the kind of Perceval which it has helped materi-
ally to create -in whom the Parsifal of Wolfram has
little and the transfigured Knight of the High History has
next to nothing at all.
240
BOOK IV
THE LESSER CHRONICLES OF THE
HOLT GRAAL
THE ARGUMENT
I. THE METRICAL ROMANCE OF JOSEPH OF ARIMA-
. — The characteristics of Robert de Borron — The
Metrical Romance presented in general synopsis — Specific
considerations of the story — The source of the text — The
Sacred Vessel as it is understood in the poem — The Divine
Communion in the tower of Joseph — The Sacred Words and
the theological position of the text — The Institution of the
Holy Table — The mystery and fate of Moses — The branches
to follow — The marriage of Alain and the succession of
Keepers. II. THE LESSER HOLY GRAAL. — Its critical
and literary position in respect of the Metrical Romance —
The distinctions on matters of importance between the two texts
— Concerning the Sacramental occurrences at the Last Supper
— Concerning the Secret Words and their written form — Con-
cerning the triple guardianship — Of words in Eucharistic
consecration — Concerning Joseph of Arimathxa — The Con-
version of Britain. III. THE EARLY HISTORY OF
MERLIN. — In what sense this branch follows from the
Metrical Romance of Joseph — The bare outlines of the story
— The story as a general introduction to the Romances of
the Round Table — Its palmary characteristics as an inter-
mediate Graal romance — The hermit Blaise — The Graal
in Northumbria — The Secret records of the Hermitage—
The Round Table, its imputed connection with that of the
Lord's Supper and with the table of Joseph — The Void
Seat — The lacuna in the succession of texts — Of him who
243
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
was to come^ and whether Galahad or another — Some implicit*
of the Legend. IV. THE DIDOT PERCEVAL. — The higher
considerations of the Quest — The outlines of this Quest —
Points of correspondence with the early epochs — Place of this
quest, if any, in the triad of Robert de Borron — Claims of
the Questing Knight — Analogies with preceding texts of the
trilogy — Discrepancies in the legend of Moses — Of Merlirfs
close in sanctity and not in enchantment — Conclusion as to
the Lesser Chronicles.
2 44
BOOK IV
THE LESSER CHRONICLES OF THE
HOLT GRAAL
I
THE METRICAL ROMANCE OF JOSEPH OF
ARIMATH&A
ROBERT DE BORRON was imbued, and even deeply, with
the religious spirit of his period. I think also that in
him there was a spiritual tincture which must have been
a little rare at that epoch among courtly minstrels. He
had seen, according to his story, some part at least of the
Great Book of the Legend, and perhaps it had changed
his life. After the manner of his time, he was attached
to a patron, and he wrote his poem for the preux and
noble chevalier Walter Montbeliard — a crusader when
the Temple was at its glory. The poem opens with an
account of the circumstances which led ultimately to the
incarnation of Christ and is based on the fact that prior
to this event, and prior indeed to the descent of Christ
into Hades, good and bad were alike in Hell and less or
more in the power of the evil hierarchy. The root-matter
of the story can be expressed in a few words, and may be
so offered to simplify the issues which are important to
our purpose and must be dealt with therefore more fully.
The vessel in which Christ prepared His sacrament,
according to those words of the text with which we are
already acquainted, was taken from the house of Simon
by a Jew and delivered into the hands of Pontius Pilate.
245
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Joseph of Arimathaea, with the assistance of Nicodemus
and by permission of Pontius Pilate, took down the body
of Jesus after the Crucifixion. The permission was a
reward asked by Joseph in return for years of military
service, and Pilate gave him in addition the vessel which
the Jew had brought him. In that vessel Joseph received
the Blood, which was still flowing from the wounds of
Christ when the body was being prepared for burial. He
laid the body in a sepulchre prepared for himself, and he
concealed the vessel in his house. After the Resurrection
the Jews sought Nicodemus, who eluded them by flight,
and Joseph, whom they seized and imprisoned in a dark
tower ; the only issue therefrom was at the summit, and
this was sealed effectually by a heavy stone. Christ came
to Joseph in the tower, brought him the Sacred Vessel
and communicated to him certain secret words which were
the grace and power thereof. Joseph remained for forty
years in his prison and was sustained by the Blessed Vessel,
as if in a condition of ecstasy and apart from any normal
consciousness concerning the flight of time. Towards
the end of that period, Vespasian, the son of Titus, being
afflicted with leprosy — and a pilgrim who reached Rome
having recounted the wonderful miracles of Jesus of which
he had heard in Palestine — a commission was sent to
Jerusalem to bring back some relic of the Master, if the
report of His death were true. The commission in due
time returned with St. Veronica, who carried the Volto
Sanfo, or Sacred Face-cloth, and this effected the desired
cure immediately. Titus and Vespasian proceeded with
an army to Palestine to avenge the death of Jesus. It
was in this manner that Vespasian found Joseph still alive
in the tower ; the stone was removed from his sepulchre,
and he who had been entombed, like Christ, like Christ
also arose ; after this rescue was effected, the Emperor's
son was converted by Joseph.
The vengeance on the Jews being in fine accomplished,
Joseph collected his relatives and many companions who
had embraced Christianity at his instance, and by the will
246
The Lesser Chronicles
of God the party started westward, carrying the Holy
Graal. For a considerable period they took possession of
a certain district and placed it under cultivation. At
length a part of the company fell away from grace, with
the result that a scarcity followed in the land, and the
vessel was used to separate the good from the evil within
the ranks of the people. For this purpose a table was
dight after the manner of that which served for the
Lord's Supper, and the vessel was set thereon. Before it
there was placed a single fish, which the Divine voice of the
Graal had directed Brons, who was the brother-in-law of
Joseph, to catch in a neighbouring water. Between Joseph
and Brons there was left a vacant seat corresponding to
that which had been made void by the defection of Judas
Iscariot. Under circumstances which remain vague in
the story, a certain part of the company, being those who
had kept in a state of grace, sat down at the table, and
the rest who gathered about were of those who had lapsed
into sin. The good people experienced all spiritual de-
light and inward refreshment, but the evil were not filled,
and they beheld nothing. When a question, put to them
by one who was named Petrus, had elicited this fact, they
were denounced as those who were guilty, and they
departed in shame. It is indeed quite clear that they
seem to have separated from the company once and for all.
The exception was a certain Moses, who manifested great
sorrow, though he was really an unbeliever at heart. His
prayers in fine obtained him permission to take a place at
the table, but the void seat was the one which alone was
available, and when he sat down thereon, the Siege and its
occupants were both swallowed by an abyss which opened
beneath them. Meanwhile the office of the table had
become a daily, as it were, a divine service, and so con-
tinued till the company was divided further to continue
the journey westward in successive parties. Alain, the
son of Brons, and his eleven brothers under his guidance
were the first to start, he carrying a certain proportion
of what must be termed the revealed knowledge of the
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Holy Graal, but it did not include apparently the Secret
Words. The communication which had been made to
Alain was because when the time came for Brons and his
wife to seek for their twelve boys some kind of settlement
in life, the eleven had elected to marry and were there-
fore provided with wives, but he who was the youngest
of all chose a life of celibacy ; he was therefore put over
his brethren, and was taken by Joseph into his heart after
a special manner. This party was followed by that of
Petrus, whose connection with the family of Joseph,
if any, is not stated ; but he was favoured in another
manner which would seem to be more distinctive, since
he carried a brief or warrant sent down from heaven
itself, but of its contents or their purport there is no
account given. His destination was the Vaux d' Avar on.
The last to depart was Brons, apparently with the rem-
nant of the people, and to him Joseph, by the divine
ordination, delivered the Sacred Vessel and communicated
the Secret Words. Joseph of Arimathaea seems to have
remained behind — though the text is corrupt at this point
—his mission being accomplished, and it would follow in
this case that shortly after he was taken into la joie per-
durable of the Paradise which is above.
The theology is in part of the popular legendary char-
acter and may seem a little fantastic even within these
limits. For the early church and the writers thereto
belonging in places remote from the centre, the world of
Christian doctrine was a world not realised, and Rome
might well have been astonished at certain things which
were said and sometimes taught with all innocence of
intention on the verges of the horizon westward. It
would be easy to furnish examples of elements in De
Borron which are not less than heretical from the doc-
trinal standpoint, but there are indications also of curious
learning and traces of strange sympathies. Among the
latter may be mentioned a certain tenderness towards
Pontius Pilate, the difficulty of whose position as the
Procurator of Judaea, when acting almost under the
248
The Lesser Chronicles
compulsion of a Jewish faction, was from any point of
view undeniable. The important point, however, is that
the sympathy reflects at a far distance the apocryphal
legends which represent Pilate as one who was converted
ultimately, who became a bishop of the Church and
sealed his testimony with martyrdom. More noticeable
than this, perhaps, for the ordinary reader is the writer's
seeming ignorance concerning the Jewish doctrine of rest
in the bosom of Abraham for those at least of the faith-
ful departed who died in the peace of Israel.
In the kind of research with which we are concerned
here, we must be careful not to mistake the unintended
blunder for the express statement. As a rule, it is easy
to distinguish the simple errors, but occasionally a specific
point may puzzle the most careful reader. While De
Borron seems wholly unconscious of opposition to the
claims of Rome, there is, of course, very full indication
of a secret which inheres in the Graal and some ground
for thinking that the rumour of this secret had gone
forth abroad in the world prior to his poem. It is,
however, a verbal formula, not apparently a doctrine.
"Those who can learn and retain these words/' says
Christ to Joseph, " shall be virtuous among people and
pleasant unto God ; they shall not be forejudged in
court, nor conquered in battle, so only that their cause
is just." There is, however, a particular point which is
a little opposed to my general view herein. Speaking of
the common hell into which all souls went prior to the
coming of Christ, De Borron says : " It was necessary
that the ransom of our first fathers should be provided
by the Three Divine Persons who are one only and the
same substance." Now, the identity of the Three Persons
in Christ is unquestionably a heresy, but, as it so happens,
this is the express teaching of Swedenborg, for whom
Christ was the manifested Trinity. It is curious to recall
the analogy, but such a notion could at no time have
formed part of any secret doctrine, supposing that this
were otherwise to be found or expected in De Borron.
249
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
So also we must not interpret as a trace of any secret
doctrine the implicit of his comparison between the con-
ception of Eve and the most Holy Virgin. He says in
effect that Eve conceived in suffering, that the posterity
of our first parents were, like them, doomed to die, and
that the possession of their souls was claimed by the
demon as his right. To purchase them from hell our
Saviour was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
and in this manner the sin of generation according to the
common course of Nature was annulled by a virginal
conception. But in the analogy there is no ulterior
motive, no arriere pensee.
The apostolic priority of Peter seems to underlie
the following statement, which is put into the mouth of
our Saviour : " I leave this example to Peter and to the
ministers of the Church." Comparatively early criticism
looked upon this as equivalent to an acknowledgment of
St. Peter as the official chief of the Catholic Holy
Assembly, and remarked that no such admission is found
in the Book of the Holy Graal, which, it should be said, is
however untrue. If we pass now to the consideration of
the Sacred Vessel and to the question what De Borron
designed to signify thereby, we may note in the first
place that, by the hypothesis of the poem, it is not
visible to evil-livers, though it is evident that they en-
circled the table at which they could not sit on the
occasion when it was first manifested to the elect. The
correspondence of this will be found much later on in the
Parsifal of Wolfram, wherein the object which corre-
sponds to the Graal was invisible to a pagan, though he
was a man of noble life and a kinsman of the Secret
House. De Borron speaks (a) of a vessel, not other-
wise named, in which Jesus washed the feet of His
disciples ; (#) of that passing fair vessel, already described,
in which Christ made His sacrament, but the institution
of the Eucharist is not mentioned more specifically ; (c)
of the use by Pilate either of this vessel or another — for
the text seems doubtful — when he washed his hands to
250
The Lesser Chronicles
signify that he was not responsible for the judgment
which he had pronounced unwillingly. As regards (£)
I have explained in the summary that a Jew carried it
from the house of Simon, when Jesus had been led forth
therefrom, and brought it to Pilate. At a later stage
Pilate took the vessel, and remembering thereof that it
was beautiful, he gave it to Joseph, saying : " Much hast
thou loved this man." Joseph answered : " Thou hast
said truly." But the gift was less an instance of gener-
osity than of the procurator's desire to retain nothing
which had belonged to Jesus, whereby it was possible
that he might be accused. Either the present state of
the text or the poet's method of expression leaves things
so much in confusion that a further question has arisen
whether the piscina used for the washing of the feet was
identical with that vessel which became ultimately the
Graal. It has been suggested that for the last word in
the line
"Ou Criz feisoit son sacrement,"
what was written and intended originally was the , word
lavement^ but this is extremely unlikely in view of the
general content and is not countenanced certainly by the
Lesser Holy Graal. It has been suggested further that ( i )
St. John does not mention the Institution of the Eucharist
and is the only Evangelist who does describe the washing
of the Apostle's feet; (2) Robert de Borron knew only
the Fourth Gospel, possibly through that of Nicodemus
in the Christian Apocrypha. But all these questions are
settled by the text itself in the discourse of Christ to
Joseph at the beginning of his imprisonment in the tower.
It is there said ( i ) that at the Last Supper on the Thursday
Christ blessed the bread and the wine and told His
disciples that they partook in those elements of His flesh
and blood ; (2) that the table of that Supper should be
represented in many countries ; (3) that the sacrament
should never be consecrated without commemoration of
Joseph, who had taken down the Divine Body from the
251
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Cross and laid it in the Sepulchre ; (4) that this tomb
should be signified by the Altar; (5) that the winding-
sheet in which the Body was wrapped should be called
the corporal ; (6) that the Holy Vessel in which Joseph
received the Blood should be called the chalice ; (7) that
the stone with which the sepulchre was sealed should be
signified by the paten. Nothing can be more express, both
as to the Mass and the Eucharist. Unfortunately, nothing
can be clearer also in the mind of the poet than the con-
tent of the Palladium of his legend — being the blood of
Three Persons in one God. And this, I think, is all that
need be said in this place concerning the Cup of the
Holy Graal in Robert de Borron.
That Christ had in nowise forgotten one who had at
need befriended Him was shown by Him bringing it into
the prison, holding it in the hands of Him, while the whole
tower was illuminated by its great light, for it was all
full of the Holy Spirit.
The Divine Discourse which occurs in this tower
between the visionary Christ and Joseph is remarkable
from several points of view, and especially by the cate-
gorical assurance that the Risen Saviour brought none
of His disciples to the conference, because none were
acquainted with the great love which subsisted between
Himself and His auditor. It seems, however, to have
been a prototype of that love which is the immanence
of Christ in the believing soul, and the palladium in
Joseph's case was the symbol of the Redeemer's death,
as it is the Eucharist in the external church. The
specific and material explanation is that Joseph took
down the body of Jesus from the Cross, and for this
reason he was to be a partaker in all glory. Of the
colloquy there were, in any case, no witnesses, and the
Gospel narratives could offer no contradiction. I suppose
that I should add an implicit which seems almost
evidently to have been in the poet's mind — that Joseph
had made the Resurrection more, humanly speaking,
possible by preserving the body as nearly intact as the
252
The Lesser Chronicles
circumstances of the Crucifixion would permit. The
difficulty which seems to have been present to the sub-
surface mind of De Borron was perhaps not unknown to
one Gospel narrative, which is careful to indicate that the
bones of Christ were not broken on the Cross.
The especial direction to Joseph was that he should
guard well the Sacred Vessel, committing it only to those
persons who were designed thereto, and by these it
should be taken as given in the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The possessors
were to be three and no more, because of the Trinity ;
they were : (a) Joseph ; (F) Brons ; and (c) the grandson
of Brons, who was to be born in the fulness of time. It
must be said that this enumeration appears to omit one
person who, according to the text itself, was intended
for some high office. When Joseph prayed before the
Cup for guidance over the future of his company,
recalling an ordinance which had told him that at what
time soever he desired secret knowledge, he should come
into the presence of the Reliquary wherein was the
g'orious blood, he was answered by the Voice of the
raal that the celibate son of Brons was to be shown
the Sacred Vessel so that he could see the content thereof.
Now this son was Alain, and it might be supposed that
the venerable charge would pass to him from his father,
more especially as, in spite of his choice, he was to beget
the keeper in fine, and was not dedicated therefore to
permanent celibacy, but held rather in maidenhood for a
marriage which was predestined already. The instruction
to Petrus announced that he was to await the arrival of
Alain's son, who would reveal to him the virtues of the
Holy Vessel — being something omitted apparently in his
undeclared brief or charter — and would make known to
him what had become of Moses.
As to this ill-starred personage, who had suffered so
strangely for parading a spurious election with intent
to deceive those who were chosen in truth and faith, it
is decreed that he shall be heard of no more in song or
253
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
fable till the knight comes who will fill the void seat. In
this dubious manner it seems to be indicated that the
wrath of the Graal would not be visited to everlasting.
After the departure of the several bands of pilgrims,
the poem comes to its conclusion for want of written
materials. The author had carried it so far on the
evidence of the sacred book to which I have cited already
the chief reference. He leaves it in the expectation that
he will recount later on as follows : —
(a) What became of Alain, whither he went, whom
he married, and what heir was born to him.
(£) Whither Petrus proceeded.
(<:) The fate of Moses, so long lost.
(d) The destination of Brons, who, outside all infer-
ences of the logical understanding, had received
the title of the Rich Fisher, on account of that
single occasion when he angled in a certain water
and caught one fish.
Meanwhile, De Borron had apparently the records of
the Fifth Branch, and to that he passed on, so producing
a metrical romance concerning the prophet Merlin. Let
us therefore on our part conclude also as follows :
(i) The formulary which incorporated the Great Secret
of the Graal was, without evasion apparently, recorded
in the prototypical chronicle by which the poet was
guided. (2) The Secret was itself denominated the
Graal, as if by a general title, the name not being applied
exclusively to the Sacred Vessel. (3) The last directions
to Joseph regarding Brons, the second keeper, are these :
Tell him how God did communicate unto thee the Holy
Words, which are sweet and precious and gracious and
piteous, which are properly called and named the Secret
of the Graal.
Hereto, therefore, as the obiter dicta at this still pre-
liminary stage, the English Syr Percyvelle may be the
nearest reflection of the quest-element in folk-lore, but
the Metrical Romance of Joseph is the nearest and earliest
reflection of all that which could have been imputed as
254
The Lesser Chronicles
historical in any lost book. It is unalloyed by folk-lore
admixtures, for no two things can be well less alike
than the pre-Graal Feeding-dish and the Hallow of
De Borron's Christian legend. The distance between the
old myths and this devotional poem is too great for us
to say that the latter is the archetypal state of this mythos
after assumption by Christianity. There is no kinship.
It is that from which the Lesser Chronicles and the Greater
Chronicles draw at their respective distances, though from
otherwhere they gathered many elements. Here at least
there are no adventitious Hallows ; it is the Graal as the
one thing only. And the Holy Graal is a symbol of the
Angel of Great Counsel made visible.
II
THE LESSER HOLT GRAAL
The first and only editor of this text put it forward as
the original prose romance from which the poem was
produced subsequently by some unknown hand, not so
much writing ostensibly under the name of Robert de
Borron as reflecting in rhymes and measures the actual
words of the original. This view did not obtain at its
period any special acceptance and has been long abandoned.
The codex as it stands is an accurate rendering of the
poem, plus certain variations and expansions, of which
some are important to our purpose and must be recited
briefly. But any literary or other distinction between the
metrical story and its disposition in another vesture leaves
the narrative untouched, both versions working from the
same beginning to the same term, so that any general
description of the Lesser Holy Graal would be superfluous
in this place.
The circumstances under which certain secret words
were communicated originally, their transit westward, and
the scheme designed for their perpetuation, constitute the
255
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
mystery-in-chief of the metrical romance, and we have
brought away from it an irresistible inference that these
words were a formula of Eucharistic consecration. The
negative proof is that they were not used by Joseph when
he had occasion to appeal for guidance to the Divine
Voice which spoke from within or about the Sacred
Vessel, or when he separated the grain from the tares in
his band of pilgrims. The proof which assumes some
aspect of a positive kind is that wonderful analogy which
the text indicates between the Sacrament of the Altar and
the Vessel, with its antecedents and environments. But
the Eucharistic character of the Secret Words is made
much more explicit in the Lesser Holy Graal^ for it is said,
speaking of the Discourse in the tower : " Thereupon did
Christ Jesus teach him those words which cannot be
spoken or written, should any one wish to do so, except
he have read the great book wherein they are recorded,
and this is the secret which is uttered at the great
sacrament performed over the Graal, that is to say, over
the chalice, and I — Robert de Borron — do, for God's love,
pray all those who shall hear this present book in the
reading thereof that they ask no further herein con-
cerning the said matter, for he who should try to say
more might well lie concerning it, since more he could in
nowise tell, and such falsehood would profit him nothing."
That the Secret Words were therefore committed to
writing follows from both versions, and the suggestion
of the Lesser Holy Graal is that the Great Book was
written by Joseph himself. The additional light which
is gained concerning the Holy Vessel is (i) that it was
the blessed and very object wherein Christ sacrificed ;
but this is less express than the words feisoit son sacrement,
which I have quoted more than once from the poem ;
(2) on the other hand, the prose version makes it plainer
than the poem that the Vessel brought by the Jew was
given to Pilate after the death of Christ, or coincidently
therewith, for which reason it could not have been used
by the procurator to wash his hands before he pronounced
256
The Lesser Chronicles
sentence ; (3) the Vessel is described by Christ as la
senefiance de ma mort.
Among points left dubious in the poem we have seen
that there is the question whether Joseph of Arimathasa
remained where he was, not proceeding further westward
than the point of separation determined for the whole
company. It would follow in this case either that one
legend concerning the evangelisation of Britain was un-
known to Robert de Borron or that it was by him ignored.
Now that which is left doubtful in the poem is carried
into triple confusion by the prose version. One of its
codices says that Joseph went into that country wherein
he was born ; another says that he departed and came to
his term in the land whither he was sent by Jesus Christ,
yet it seems to follow from this second text that the
whole company was already in la bloie Eretagne and that
Joseph had converted it newly to the belief in Jesus
Christ.
It will serve no purpose of mine to enlarge upon
minor debatable points which occur in the prose version,
as, for example, on the doubt which it creates whether
(a) the third keeper of the Graal will be the son of
Brons, by which we should understand Alain ; (£) whether
he shall be the son of his son, as in the metrical romance ;
and (c] whether the triple guardianship, corresponding
to the Holy Trinity, should be enumerated after Joseph
has surrendered the symbol of his mission, which is the
reading of one codex and follows also from the metrical
romance. It is sufficient to state in conclusion that
as regards the second table, and the reason why it
was established, the texts in verse and prose are both
in agreement that whatever the needs of the com-
pany there was (a) no miracle in the multiplication of
food ; (£) only a spiritual refection ; (c) the essence of
which was to fill the participants with grace ; (d] one
proof being that the fish of Brons becomes wholly sym-
bolical and figures continually at the service.
257 R
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
III
THE EARLY HISTORT OF MERLIN
The Mystery of the Holy Graal was a mystery of
grace behind Arthurian literature till the time came for
it to be manifested at the period of the Quests, and
among the texts in which it is exhibited as if working
from afar and vaguely there is that which I have termed
for convenience the Early History of Merlin, being the
transcript in prose of another metrical romance by which
Robert de Borron proceeded, for want of intermediate
materials, from the history of Joseph to the period which
just antedated the birth and life of King Arthur. The
tradition of the one romance is carried over by the other,
and as such it is at once interesting extremely and im-
portant for our purpose. With the story itself we are
concerned only in the least possible degree. It narrates,
in the first place, a conference of demons that seems to
have been summoned immediately after the Descent of
Christ into hell to consider the best means of reducing to
a minimum the opportunity of human redemption which
had been inaugurated by the sudden translation of all the
just of old from the supposed power of Infernus into
the joy of Paradise. The conclusion attained was that if
only some emissary of theirs could be born on earth,
having for his father one of the evil person* and for his
mother a woman in the flesh, they would recover some
part at least of the patrimony which they claimed in souls.
There was one in the council, belonging to that averse
hierarchy which is termed the Powers of the Air, who
had the gift under certain conditions to make earthly
women conceive, and he went forth upon this mission.
What he did, however, was to surprise a pure maiden,
apart from all knowledge of hers, at an unwary moment.
After this manner was Merlin born into the world, in
the accomplishment of which plot we are translated, with
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no suggestion or manifest sense of the intervening cen-
turies, from the days which preceded the Ascension to
the reign of Vortigern in Britain. The device of per-
dition had gone, as usual, astray, and that utterly ; for
the mother was saved spiritually by her innocence and, on
the discovery of her predicament, by recourse immediately
to the offices of holy religion. She was accused indeed
before the judges of the country, but the child himself
saved her, for, being a babe, he yet spoke — now with the
cunning which might be ascribed to his father in Sheol,
and now with the subtlety and foresight which suggested
the intervention of another and higher power, as if this
had taken him for its own purpose into its safe custody.
Throughout the story Merlin, in virtue of his dual
origin, is in part true steel and in part clay. Robert
de Borron borrowed from antecedent materials which we
can trace in their larger proportion, but the high spirit
of his religious disposition worked upon that which he
assumed, and wrought a great change therein. His
Merlin has come really as if in the power of a mission
which had been imprinted with a Divine seal, and though
he is at best an admixture, and though the character
of some of his actions is stained enough, he who has
created him in literature more even than he has derived,
does not weary of saying that God, who spared Merlin's
mother in the body of her was able to save him in the
soul, or at least contribute thereto, because of her perfect
reconciliation with Holy Church. She had indeed sinned
not at all, but had once, under great stress, forgotten to
pray, and the visitation which came upon her was the
hand of a providence rather than a hand which chastised.
According to one text, with which we shall deal later,
she became at length a nun, and so passed in sanctity.
To pass thus also was evidently De Borron's intention
as to the son's destiny, and at the end of the Lesser
Chronicles we shall see how it was fulfilled. Meanwhile,
the expressed mission of Merlin was after an unwonted
manner to teach the love of Jesus Christ and the life
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everlasting. The note of this intention occurs early in
the story, when it is said that God took the fiend-born
child to His own use, though the mystery is the manner
of that use ; his double nature was such and so granted
that he might yield to God His part and -to the fiend also
his own. There are other stories which tell how Merlin
dwelt amidst illusion, and how at the end he passed
therein, but these are not of Robert de Borron.
The exigencies of intention rather than of the story
itself take Merlin to Britain at a period which, according
to his years, would be early out of reason for his work,
but he who was never a child was more already than a
man. There is no need to recite under what circum-
stances, initial and successive, he became the high coun-
cillor and worker of many miracles to four kings,
each after the other : Vortigern, Pendragon, Uther
Pendragon and Arthur. What remains to be said of
his history will best fall under the considerations which
now follow.
It is perhaps the Merlin cycle which offers the most
curious among what I have termed the Lesser Implicits
of the Graal literature. I must put them at a certain
length because of their apparent importance, and will
say in the first place that on Robert de Borron's part,
as on that of certain other and unknown writers, there
were two tangible purposes in full view : ( i ) To
connect Merlin with all that Graal Mystery which was
antecedent to the ascribed times of the prophet; (2) to
identify his function with the termination of the Graal
marvels under the pretext of times of enchantment or
times adventurous. We are drawn through far tracts
of speculation in seeking to understand what sub-surface
disposition of mind could have actuated these purposes,
but at the moment we are concerned in ascertaining how
they are carried out in the story.
There was a hermit named Blaise, to whom the mother
of Merlin had recourse in her unexpected difficulties,
who had been also her spiritual adviser previously. The
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'The Lesser Chronicles
text says that this hermit was an exceeding good clerk
and subtle, for which reason Merlin prayed that he
would become his recorder-in-chief, not only of all his
deeds, but of things heard and seen which he might well
think that no creature could express. A consent was
obtained only after the holy man had conjured the
querent in the Name of the Divine Trinity that he
should deceive him in nowise ; but Merlin answered
that the records would rather keep him from sin than
dispose thereto. It is in this way that Blaise is one
of its characters even from the beginning of the romance,
but his chronicle itself began long prior to the birth
of Merlin, for at the instance of him who was to prove
himself a prophet in Britain, he wrote first of the great
love between Christ and Joseph of Arimathaea, of the
lineage of Joseph, the names of those who were to be
the guardians of the Graal, of Alain and his companions
and whither they journeyed, of the departure of Peter
westward, of the transmission of the Holy Vessel from
Joseph to Brons, and of the death of Joseph. The
history of these things was to be joined with that of
Merlin, and the two recitals were to form a single book,
complete in respect of everything, save only the Secret
Words revealed to Joseph by Christ, whereof Merlin
could say nothing — the reason of which is to be inferred
from the Quest-matter of the Lesser Chronicles, namely,
that he had not received them.
In accordance with the general trend of the earlier
history and of the personages concerned therein, Merlin
announced his intention to go west — that is, apparently
out of Brittany into the land of Vortigern, or Greater
Britain, and Blaise was also to follow, betaking himself to
Northumbria, where it is said that the guardians of the
Graal were then dwelling, though they are not specified
by name. The first recompense of Blaise in this life was
to be united with these Wardens, but thereafter it was to
be joie perdurable. The Graal is the talisman of the
whole story, and hereof is the repose of the Graal — that
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
they who have achieved the search shall have rest in the
term thereof. And the book made by Blaise was to be
called while the world endured the Book of the Seynt
Graal. In this manner did Merlin, though he was not
in any sense a custodian of the Hallows, make a certain
claim upon them in the dispensation of their graces and
rewards. It was not, in the symbolical sense, of an idle
nature, not the artifice of an impostor ; rather it was of
set purpose and as if the external sign of some secret
warrant, in virtue of which the highest branch of the
Graal history is connected indissolubly with Merlin. He
laid the scheme, and the Hallows conformed thereto, the
end being the termination of those dubious times, the
dereliction of which we have heard of so often and can
as yet understand so little.
Of such is the Graal in the Early History of Merlin.
But this is also the first romance which, in the chrono-
logical succession of texts, apart from priority in time of
literary production, introduces the Third Table and the
mystery of the Siege Perilous. It may be held to con-
stitute another side of its particular claim concerning the
British prophet. Those who have followed so far the
history of the Second Table will perhaps have recalled
already that a vacant seat was left of old at the Passover
for the unexpected guest, and it is still left by the Jews.
There is also that custom, beautiful and piteous, of
leaving a vacant seat for the Angel of Peace. I do not
know what memories of this kind were present to the
mind of De Borron when he borrowed from those who
had preceded him the idea of the Round Table and
attributed its foundation to Uther Pendragon, not to
King Arthur, Merlin, however, being in either case the
instigator of its institution. With his reflex of the spirit
of sanctity, as conceived by the British prophet, the
knightly table was something more than a substitute, and
assuredly, in some later aspects, it reflected on earth that
which belongs to heaven.
In the course of his proposal, Merlin told Uther
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The Lesser Chronicles
Pendragon the story of Joseph of Arimathasa, and how in
the desert places, the sowing of which had become void
through the sin of some who went forth, the Second
Table had been instituted to separate the good from the
evil. The Third was to be established by Uther in the
Name of the Trinity, and it was to be set up at Cardoil
in Wales for a certain Feast of Pentecost — that is to say,
of the Holy Spirit. As there was a place that was void
at the Table of Joseph so there was to be one now, which
should not be filled in the days of Uther Pendragon, but
of the king who was to come after him. The knight
who would then fill it was not as yet born, which is
colourable enough as a pretence in respect of the Perceval
who was to follow as questing knight according to the
Lesser Chronicles. But the codices have been edited in
variant interests and the English rendering, represented
by an unique text and drawing from what source I know
not, adds words as follows which could apply only to
Galahad : " Ne he that shall hym engendere shall not
know that he shall hym engendere." On the other hand,
the Huth Merlin says that he will be engendered by him
who ought so to engender him, but as yet he has not
taken a wife, nor does he know that he ought to engender
him — a passage which, after much circumlocution, comes
to nothing. The text suggests otherwise that before the
predestined hero takes the void seat he must accomplish
the adventures of the Graal, which is contrary to all the
texts, historical and otherwise. The Vulgate Merlin says
in effect that he who fills the one will fulfil the other. And
the English version : " And he that shall a-complysshe that
sete must also complysshe the voyde place at the table that
Joseph made." This seems to create on the surface an
almost insoluble difficulty, but the meaning is probably
that in the secret and holy place where the Graal abides,
the service of the Second Table is held still, as it was in
the days of Joseph, that he who enters into the House
shall take the seat reserved for him, and that the Table
shall be in fine complete.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Of such was the second mission of the prophet Merlin ;
but the third was the conception of Arthur and the
conduct of all those events which should lead to his high
coronation as King of Britain. I need not reproduce in
this place the familiar story of Ygerne, the faithful wife
of the Duke of Tintagel, and of the sorcery by which she
received Uther Pendragon in the likeness of her husband
and so brought forth the great king who was to come.
The circumstances of the imbedded sword which led to his
ultimate recognition, though he had been reared as the
reputed son of a simple knight, are or ought to be
familiar. It was to achieve his prophetic purpose that
Merlin assisted Uther over those things which led up to
the conception of Arthur, since the latter was to con-
summate the great intent of the Round Table which was
begun by his father. The conception was one of a triad
— of Merlin, of Arthur, of Galahad — which all took
place under false pretences. Merlin was conscious that
he had sinned in respect of this business, and apparently
he sought to make amends by assisting the subsequent
marriage between Uther and Ygerne and by his arrange-
ments in respect of the charge of Arthur in childhood.
It should be noted in fine (a) that no Keeper of the
Graal is mentioned in the Early History of Merlin^ though
the locality of its abode is indicated ; ($) that there is only
a covert reference to Moses ; (<:) that certain sources are
obvious for certain texts, but there are important respects
in which all the early romances seem echoes from far
away of a book that had never been seen by their writers,
though it had been heard of by a general report ; and
(d) that this statement is intended to override all their
reference, actual or imaginary, to mysterious sources of
information which are not — if they were ever — extant.
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The Lesser Chronicles
IV
THE DIDOT PERCEVAL
Without instituting in the present stage of the question
more than a parallel, the Quest of the Graal is the
adventurous mission of those who go forth out of
earthly houses, who depart from tables of wonder, from
the enchantments and illusions of magicians after the
manner of Merlin — when Merlin was not at his highest—
and issue into strange lands, some unprepared enough,
but some under spiritual guidance, observing the ordi-
nances of instructors and looking for a mystical place.
Few are destined for the perfect fulfilment of their
object, but that which opens for these is the path of
heaven. Though time and place are imputed, and this
of necessity, it can be said scarcely that such limits are
native to this manner of research. There is, according
to the Hebrews, a palace at the centre which sustains all
things, and in the terms of another symbolism it is the
sanctuary of that which in later times was called the Holy
Graal. The first consideration which must be kept
present to the mind, as if here were also an implicit, in
dealing with our whole subject, is that nothing on its
surface differs in doctrine or in specific institutes from
the beaten tracks of the faith delivered to the saints, and
yet all undergoes a great transfiguration. There are
many quests in folk-lore which, in their bare outlines, are
analogous to this quest, with due allowance for the dis-
tinction of motive and all that belongs to the class of
voided marvels. There is also the great debate concern-
ing initiation and its purport, which seems to hold a
middle place between that which is below — and is noth-
ing— and that which is above — and is all, tending to the
same term as the higher, and exhibiting after what manner
that which is mortal puts on immortality in virtue of
high election. It is well to recall these things, because
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the text with which we are dealing, though it has its
claims and intentions, is far from this term.
From the Merlin there follows directly the Didot
Perceval as the Merlin Quest par excellence, but it gleams
dimly through a vague species of cloud ; and as there is
much which preceded the romance of the prophet, and
remains among the implicits of the literature, so there is
much which might be supposed to come after the Quest,
as, for example, the rewards which are somewhere held
in reserve for those who practise holiness.
There is no doubt that up to a certain point the Didot
Perceval connects logically with the two poems which, by
the particular hypothesis, were designed to lead up there-
to. Its ascription to Robert de Borron, by the secondary
and reflective way of a prose version, has been rejected by
certain students in the past, but the state of the case is
doubtful and opinions vary. It is almost impossible to
read the opening portion without feeling that here is the
genuine third part of the trilogy ; while the fact, so fre-
quently exemplified, that Perceval remains throughout a
virgo Intacta, is in perfect harmony with the mind of
the metrical romance. The Early History or first part
of the Vulgate Merlin follows directly from the poem
of Joseph of Arimathasa, and so far as we can ascertain it
closed for Robert de Borron at that stage, when it could,
without any violation, be merged in the Perceval legend,
by which the tradition is continued without a break of
any kind. One other favourable point, and assuredly
these points are many, is that — unlike the 'Book of the Holy
Graal, which makes an effort in this direction but fails
manifestly — it does not seek to fill the gap left by De
Borron's missing branches ; it does not mention Petrus,
his Brief notwithstanding ; as to Brons, it says only that
he is old and full of infirmity ; as to Akin, he is dying.
All this tends to show that the intermediate promised
branches were non-existent rather than lost, and I say this
remembering that one of the unprinted Merlin codices
speaks of a text which contains the marriage of Alain.
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The Lesser Chronicles
To conclude as to this question, the early history of the
prophet specifies at the term thereof that Arthur, after
his coronation, held the kingdom of Logres long in peace,
while it leaves Merlin as his councillor. The Perceval
opens with an account of the prophet's instruction to the
King concerning the Round Table and the Graal mys-
teries which went before its institution ; it is only at the
term of the Quest that Merlin passes into voluntary and,
as one would think, ascetic retirement, free from personal
enchantment and having delivered Britain from spell.
The later Merlin texts, on the contrary, intern the
prophet, and then, and not after, lead up to the Galahad
Quest. It is difficult therefore to say that the Didot
Perceval does not reflect, from at hand or afar, the lost
romance which completed the trilogy of De Borron.
Perceval was the son of Alain le Gros, the grandson
of Brons, and the third of that earthly trinity which
was destined to possess the Graal. While Arthur was
holding high festival at London and was listening to the
counsel of Merlin, the voice of the Holy Spirit spoke to
Perceval's father — he being near his end — and informed
him that Brons, the Rich Fisherman and the Warden
of the Graal, was in the isles of Ireland, and that the
Holy Vessel was with him. He was old, as I have
said already, but he could not seek refuge in death
till he was found by the son of Alain, had communicated
to this son the grace of that vessel, and had taught
him the secret words which he learned himself from
Joseph. To express it more nearly in language of
romance, the Quest, which is the intention of the
story, must be fulfilled in all perfection. Thereafter
his infirmity would be healed, apparently by the medicine
of eternity, or, as the text says, by his entrance into the
great joy of that Father in Heaven whom he had served
always in time. The youth, Perceval, was therefore
directed to repair to the court of King Arthur, and it
was promised him that in this place he should hear such
tidings that he would be brought in due season to the
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
house of the Rich Fisher. When Alain had received
this direction, he bowed his head and entered himself,
as one who arrives beforehand, into the Company of
Christ.
Perceval, in his outward seeming, has little title to
participate in the mysteries, except the title of his geniture.
He is brave, savage and imperious ; he is also chivalrous,
but he is without the spiritual chivalry which we find
in the great Quest. He was then living with his
mother, who, as we can infer subsequently, sought
to dissuade him from the journey ; but obeying the
Divine Voice, which had come also to him, he set out
for the court of King Arthur ; there he abode for a
season ; there he received the grade of chivalry. At
the court he saw Aleine, the niece of Gawain, the
niece also of the King, and the text says that she
loved Perceval with all love that was possible, because
in addition to his bravery he was also beautiful. It
came about that she sent him red armour to wear
on her behalf at a tournament ; in this manner he
was accounted her knight, and she shared in the glory
of his achievements. But hereafter nothing follows con-
cerning her. Perceval was proclaimed the best knight
of the world after overcoming Lancelot and others
of the high company at the joust, it being then the
Feast of Pentecost. There was high feasting in the
hall after the tournament, and Perceval, who was to
some extent exalted, desired to occupy the seat left
vacant at the Round Table for the predestined third
custodian of the Holy Graal. King Arthur endeavoured
to dissuade him, remembering the fate of Moses, but
the prayers of Gawain and Lancelot prevailed with the
monarch. A tremendous confusion ensued notwith-
standing, over which rose the voice of an invisible
speaker, bearing once more the same witness which
the Voice of the Spirit had borne recently to Alain,
but revealing further that the healing of the Rich Fisher
depended on a visit to his castle which must be paid
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The Lesser Chronicles
by the best knight of the world, who must ask further
concerning the secret service of the Graal. By the
instructions which would follow, a period should be
put to the enchantments of Britain. The voice also
spoke of the dolorous death of Moses, who, according
to the text otherwise, was to remain in the abyss until
the days of Anti-Christ. The Quest was undertaken
by Perceval, and there were others, Gawain included,
who also ventured forth therein, but it is stated that
of how they fared the book, which is the proto-
type, says nothing. Our text, however, shows on its
own part that one of the knights was slain. King
Arthur deplored the Quest, as he does in the romance
of Galahad.
The course of Perceval's adventures covers many of
those incidents with which we are acquainted already in
the Welsh Peredur and the Conte del Graal. There is, for
example, the visit to that strange castle wherein he plays
chess with an invisible opponent, and is mated. From
this follows some part of the episodes which concern the
quest of the Stag's Head in company with a hound
belonging to a maiden of the Castle. For our purpose
it is more pertinent to mention that Perceval visited his
sister, from whom he learned the story of their father,
his own early history, and the prophecy concerning the
Graal. He heard further that his mother was dead at
grief for his departure, and though, under the direc-
tion received, he cannot be said to have deserted her,
it is accounted to him somehow as a sin after the con-
fused manner of materials drawn from many sources.
He visited also his uncle, the hermit, who is the brother
of Alain, and is seemingly one of the twelve brethren who
were children of Brons. It is obvious therefore that the
note of time is again wanting entirely, as for any purpose
of the story this perpetuation of ordinary life through the
centuries has no meaning. Perceval confessed to his uncle
and heard from him that at the table instituted by Joseph
—he also assisting — the Voice of the Spirit commended
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
them to journey far into the countries of the West, and
ordained in particular that the Rich Fisher should go forth
into those parts where the sun set. In fine, the hermit told
him how the son of Alain le Gros would perform such feats
of chivalry that he should be called the best knight of the
world. It is obvious that this information does not cor-
respond very closely with any extant text of Graal history.
The uncle continued to speak of that peculiar and holy
service to which the youth had been called, and counselled
him to be pure in his life ; but he did not, as in other
quests, advise him to beware of idle speaking or of the
curiosity which leads to questioning. After these things
Perceval continued the Quest, and among other adventures
he met with a knight who, owing to this encounter, had
missed by seven days the crown of the world's knighthood,
but who ultimately vanished from sight. He saw further
the wonder of two children disporting themselves in a
tree ; they spoke to him of the Terrestrial Paradise and
of the Holy Spirit ; they also directed him on his Quest,
so that he fared better according to this story than he
did in the corresponding episode of the Conte del Graal.
Perceval reached in fine the Castle of his grandfather,
the Rich Fisher, where he was received after the mode
of chivalry, and the Warden of the Graal was borne
into his presence in the arms of sergeants. They
sat down to table and the procession of the Hallows
entered in the accustomed manner. Perceval was said,
however, to remember one counsel of caution which he
had received from his uncle in the matter of questioning,
from which it is certain that the text follows some
prototype which it does not reproduce faithfully. He
was also outwearied by vigils on two previous nights, and
his host, when he noticed this, directed the table to be
removed and a bed to be prepared for the knight, who
retired thinking deeply of the Lance and the Graal, pro-
mising himself that he would inquire of the pages to-
morrow. The voice of the invisible speaker which had
directed him and the others with such utter plainness at
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'The Lesser Chronicles
the court of King Arthur had lapsed apparently from his
mind, and from that fatal inattention he passed into the
forgetfulness of sleep. On the morrow he went down
into the courtyard, to find his horse and arms awaiting
him, but there was no one else to be seen. He was
cursed by a maiden in a forest adjoining the Castle, and
was told that, so only that he had asked the question, the
prophecy of our Saviour to Joseph would have been
accomplished ; but of this prophecy we find no particulars
in the antecedent texts. The Fisher King would have
been restored to health, and there would have ceased those
enchantments of Britain the nature and cause of which
still fail to appear. Perceval sought in vain to rediscover
the Castle, for over the whole land he could find its trace
no longer. As in previous texts, he returned to the
maiden of the chess-board, with the dog to her belonging
and a stag's head. She desired him to remain in her
company, but he left, with a promise to return, saying
that otherwise he would be false to the vow which he had
made. I infer that in this manner he preserved his de-
sired purity, but he fell into other evils during a pilgrimage
of seven years which followed thereafter. Through
distress at being unable to find the Fisher King, he lost
all memory of God until he met with the pilgrim
company on Good Friday, who asked, as in previous
texts, why he rode armed for purposes of destruc-
tion on such a sacred day. His better nature then
returned to him, and before long he was knocking once
more at the door of his uncle the hermit, to whom he
confessed all. It was his intention to revisit his sister,
but he was told that she was dead these two years past.
After certain further episodes he met with Merlin, who
reproached him for neglecting the Quest, much as he was
reproached by a certain hutsman in one of the additamenta
to the poem of Gautier. Perceval heard also that the
health of the Rich Fisher was still such that he remained
at the point of death, though he could not pass away.
But his prayers were going up for his grandson, and by
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the will of God he was to be the guardian of the Precious
Blood. The authority throughout is the record of Blaise,
to whom Merlin returned after this conversation and
recounted that which had passed, as he does so continually
in the course of his own romance.
Perceval at last reached the Castle of the Rich Fisher for
the second time ; again he beheld the Graal, and on this
occasion asked concerning its service, at which the King
was cured, and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
all was changed about him. The relationship between
them was declared, and Perceval being instructed in
the history of the Hallows was led into the presence of
the Holy Vessel, where the Voice of High Counsel told
Brons to communicate the Secret Words. In the fulfil-
ment of this command the ancient Warden might have
been still speaking when the soul passed from his body,
and Perceval saw how the angels bore it to the kingdom
of Heaven, unto the Father whom he had served so long.
Perceval remained in the Castle, practising wisdom, and
there was an end to the enchantments of Britain. It was
as if an interdict had been imposed and a legate had
removed the interdict.
While things were so ordered in the secret sanctuary,
there were events in the outer world which led up to the
passing of Arthur, who was carried into Avalon to be
healed of his grievous wounds by his sister Morgan le
Fay. Merlin was still in evidence, passing to and fro
between the king's court and the sanctuary of the Holy
Vessel, where then, as subsequently, Perceval seems to
have divided his office of Warden with the scribe of the
records thereof. After the death of Arthur, Merlin
appeared for the last time, recounting the woes which
had befallen, whereat the place of the Hallows became
a house of mourning and a chapel for the office of the
dead. The prophet took leave of the Wardens, because
it was God's will no longer that he should go to and fro
in the world, and he would therefore betake himself, as
if for a last refuge, to a hermitage in the forest which
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encompassed the castle. It follows that the term of
Merlin is revolutionised in this romance ; he does not
pass in enchantment, inhibition and the folly of morganatic
ties, but seeking the peace of God, and choosing the life
of contemplation. Thereafter he was seen no longer,
and there was no further story concerning the Holy
Graal.
The Didot Perceval and the Parsifal of Wolfram are
the only texts which leave the last Warden alive and
dwelling in the sanctuary. It should be noted further
that the Quest in this instance does not involve the
destruction of Logres or a fatality to the Round Table,
though this fatality occurs. The point is important,
because it is another note of the correspondences between
the Didot Perceval and the Early Merlin. The secret
conspiracy, planned, as one might say, in the sanctuary,
against the great chivalry was undreamed of by Robert
de Borron and is peculiar to the Greater Chronicles.
The unanimity of the Lesser Chronicles resides, among
other things, in the fact that they are all texts of the
Secret Sanctuary, and they emanate by the hypothesis
therefrom. They suggest no public office ; there is no
travelling of the Graal. Britain suffers during the Quest
period from an enchantment, but it is not described, and
it is to be doubted whether Britain knew of it. It is the
most occult of all processes and the most withdrawn of
all localised mysteries. Brons and Alain have done nothing
in the land ; they are aliens of sanctity, with the burden
of the years of the Juif errant upon them ; and they abide
in seclusion.
The Didot Perceval is scarcely at peace with itself over
some of its elements, nor is it at peace with those texts
antecedent from which it follows that the third keeper
will (a) meet with Petrus, who carries the Sacred Brief,
and with him compare their knowledge in common of
the Graal Mystery ; (£) find Moses, and this under
circumstances which suggest some palliation at least of
that which he has suffered through the ages. I do not
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
think that these points make void its place in the trilogy,
because there are several respects in which all the Graal
books, like other romances of chivalry, are conven-
tions of the cohorts of sleep, and there is sometimes a
distracting spirit moving through the great dream.
274
BOOK V
THE GREATER CHRONICLES OF THE
HOLT GRAAL
THE ARGUMENT
I. THE BOOK OF THE HOLY GRAAL AND, IN THE FIRST
PLACE, THE PROLOGUE THERETO BELONGING. — The claims
and defects of the Text regarded generally — The secret
of this cycle — Its imputed authorship — Its hypothetical
divisions — The Hermit of the Legend — What he read and
saw at a Mass of the Presanctified — Disappearance of the
Secret Book — The Quest of its recovery — The time for the
transcript thereof. II. A NEW CONSIDERATION CONCERN-
ING THE BRANCHES OF THE CHRONICLE AND CONCERNING
ITS MAJOR BRANCHES. — Divergence of the extant manu-
scripts— The incorporation of De Borron elements — The
point at which their tradition is broken, and this completely
— The arrival at Sarras — Events which lead up to the con-
version of this city — The Spiritual Palace — The ordination
of Joseph II. — His later life — Of Evalach, the King of
Sarras, who was afterwards Mordrains — Of Queen
Sarracinte — Of Seraphe, who was also Nasciens — Of
Celidoine, the son of Nasciens — The Ship of Solomon — The
Building of Corbenic. III. THE MINOR BRANCHES OF THE
CHRONICLE. — The Later History of Joseph of Arimathes a
— The Life of Petrus in Britain — Of Brons and Alain —
Variations in the History of Moses — Of Simeon and his
Brethren — Concerning the first Galahad — The Genealogies
— Conclusion as to the Book of the Holy Graal. IV. SOME
LATER MERLIN LEGENDS. — And firstly as to the scope of
these Texts — (A) The Vulgate Merlin — Its Antecedents in
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
History — Merlin as the chief promulgator of the Graal
Mystery — The House of the Holy Vessel — Of the second
Nasciens and his history — King Pelles of Lytenoys — The
Maimed King — The Daughter of the House — A son of King
Pelles— Tidings of the Graal in Britain— (H) The Huth
Merlin — Its false ascription — Its consideration as a stately
romance — The intention of the story — Of secret records—
The branches of the story — The Internment of Merlin —
Concerning the father of Perceval — The Institution of the
Round Table — The Vacant Seat — The Hidden Life of the
Holy House — The Dolorous Stroke — The Secret Powers of
Avalon. V. THE GREAT PROSE LANCELOT. — The ante-
cedents of the story — An undeclared Mystery of the Graal
— Of Perceval in the Great Quest — Particular Graal tra-
ditions— Missing elements of Quest — The Genealogy of
Lancelot — His life in Faerie — Of Moses and Simeon — Of
Gawain at Castle Corbenic — Of Lancelot and the Lady of the
Bath — Helayne, the Maiden of the Graal — The conception
of Galahad. VI. A PREFACE OR INTRODUCTORY PORTION
APPERTAINING TO ALL THE QUESTS. — Claims of the questing
Knights — And further concerning Gawain — A pentagram of
chivalry — The Mystery of Divine Providence manifested in
flesh. VII. THE LONGER PROSE PERCEVAL. — Its imputed
antecedents — The initial point which constitutes a departure
from tradition — After what manner the departure is per-
petuated throughout — Of pageants abroad in the land —
The Earthly Paradise — The state of King Arthur — Of
Gawain' s visit to the Graal — And that of Lancelot—
The death of Guinevere — Visions of the King — The King
of Castle Mortal — The death of King Fisherman — The
capture of the Graal Castle — The removal of the Hallows —
The siege and victory by Perceval — The reign of the last
Keeper — The distribution of the Hallows — The departure
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The Argument
of Perceval. VIII. THE QUEST OF THE HIGH PRINCE.—
Of the generation of Galahad — Of some things which
followed thereafter — The circumstances of his first mani-
festation— Its mystic environment — Of the Eucharist in the
Quest — Of arch-natural feasting — The Quest in brief outline
— The liberation of Simeon — The release of King Mor drains
— The voyage in the Ship of Solomon — The term of Quest at
Corbenic — The Mystery unveiled — The Ascent of Galahad
— The doom of earthly Knighthood. IX. THE WELSH QUEST.
— The position of this version — Its variations in summary —
Wanderings of the Graal — The Dolorous Stroke — Specifics
of the last scene — Additamenta to the Greater Chronicles.
279
BOOK V
THE GREATER CHRONICLES OF THE
HOLT GRAAL
I
THE BOOK OF THE HOLT GRAAL AND, IN THE
FIRST PLACE, THE PROLOGUE THERETO
BELONGING
THE Book of the Holy Graal is the most conscious, most
cumbersome, most artificial romance in the literature. It
is that also which is beyond all prodigal of wonders, and
its wonders are the least convincing. In so far as con-
cerns the history of the Sacred Vessel, it must be said
that it materialises the symbol and it also distracts the
legend. Robert de Borron finished his metrical romance
by confessing that for want of materials he must, for the
time being, hold over those branches of his chronicle
which were intended to deal with the further adventures
of Brons, Alain, Petrus and the connected characters of
the story. In the meantime he proceeded to the life
of Merlin, bridging the gulf of centuries by a promise
to retrace the path when he had obtained the necessary
data, though it is possible enough that the intervening
distances of time may have spelt little to his mind. All
that could be construed as wanting is supplied by the
Book of the Holy Graal, leaving nothing undone, but
working through I know not what mazes of great en-
chantment. I have said that the artifice of the design —
which obtains also for its expression — stands forth in
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
full manifestation, even upon its surface. A hand more
sparing might have worked greater marvels and left some
sense of realism, at least in the order of faerie. And yet
the prolix history has a certain touch of enchantment,
all paths of disillusion notwithstanding.
From whatever point of view it is approached, the
entire text will prove to be sown with difficulties — curious
things in truth of the worlds within and without, but
even as difficulties these have also their secret charm. It
has vast sections of unnecessary matter which suggest an
imperfect art of mere story-telling, and it also deals with
materials which do not belong, more especially at its own
period, to the horizon confessed by that art. Moreover,
nothing is really finished, for, as one of its sub-titles
indicates, it is the first branch of the romances of the
Round Table, or it is rather the prolegomenon to these.
A cycle of the literature of chivalry is supposed to follow
thereafter, which may mean that the writer had a mind
to go further, or, alternatively, that his intention was to
present the collated antecedents leading up to other docu-
ments which in one or another form were there already
in being. Accepting either alternative, this prolix in-
troduction in general, which presupposes and from which
ex hypothesi there follows so great a cloud of romance,
offers herein a first point of distinction from the trilogy
ascribed to Robert de Borron. The latter lies, compara-
tively speaking, within such a narrow compass and yet
has a claim to completeness within its own lines and
measures. There are other distinctions, however, which
are not less marked in their character and are very much
more important. The account which I propose of the
document will differ from ordinary critical and textual
apprehension by way of direct summary, since it is actuated
by exclusive objects which connect with the design of my
study.
As the Lesser Chronicles of the Holy Graal are con-
cerned with the reservation of a great secret or sacra-
mental formula, so there is also a secret in the Book of
282
The Greater Chronicles
the Holy Graal, and herein is the second distinction which
we are called to make between them. That particular
form of the Eucharistic mystery which we find in Robert
de Borron and his line of anonymous successors is made
void by the later romance ; as if it had planned to show
that there were no secret words of consecration, the actual
mass-words are given in full, and although they are those
of a liturgy which differs from the formula of the Latin
rite and betrays oriental influences, the variations are
local and accidental, and, except for liturgical history,
they wear no aspect of importance. At the same time,
when the Hermit of the Book of the Holy Graal is first
received into that state of vision from which the tran-
script of the text follows, what he is promised by Christ
is the revelation of the greatest secret of the world. But
this is the book itself, which is invariably spoken of as
very small — so small indeed that it can lie in the hollow
of his hand. This notwithstanding, it is the greatest
marvel that man can ever receive. In its original form
it was written by Christ Himself, who committed to
writing only: (a) the Book of the Holy Graal; (£) the
Lord's Prayer ; (c) the words written in the sand, accord-
ing to the New Testament. To pronounce aloud the
words contained in the book would convulse the ele-
mental world, and it must therefore be read with the
heart.
Not exactly on this consideration but not for less
cogent reasons, the first thing which is apparent con-
cerning it is that although the Hermit is covenanted to
transcribe it and to occupy in this task the period which
intervenes between the fifteenth day after Easter and
the day of the Ascension ; although further he states
expressly that what he wrote down is that which follows
his prologue ; the secret book committed to his charge
is not that which he transmits as a memorial for those
who come after him. I suppose that in registering this
with a certain touch of fantastic gravity, my motive can
be scarcely misconstrued ; we are dealing with a parable
283
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
or pretence, and the point is that it is not especially con-
sistent within its own lines. After making every allow-
ance for the variations of late editing, both intentional
and otherwise, it remains that the text of the story voids
the claim of the prologue, and this to such an extent
that a substitute only is offered for that which was
brought from heaven for the assumed illumination of
Logres.
The Book of the Transcript is by the hypothesis of
the prologue divided into four branches, of which the
first concerns the lineage of the Hermit himself ; and on
the assumption that the Ruth Merlin is correct in identify-
ing the latter with that second Nascien, who, in the days
of the enchanter and those of Uther Pendragon, was at
first of the order of chivalry and afterwards a holy recluse,
it will follow that the entire romance corresponds to
this designation rather than an individual part. The
second branch is that of the Holy Graal, which is the
title of the collection itself: Li Litres du Saint Graal,
and it cannot be allocated to a section. The third branch
is called the beginning of the Terrors, and the fourth is
that of the Marvels, which in like manner will not assist
towards any logical classification, as we are concerned
with something which answers in all its modes to the title
of a wonder-book.
The most express, most ordered, most reasoned part
of the entire history is assuredly what is termed the pro-
logue ; it is there that the Hermit accounts for the manner
in which he came for a period into the possession of the
original text. It reads in certain passages like a story of
initiation. The parti pris is quick to self-deception, and
one sees too easily that for which one is looking ; but
here are words which are exceedingly like the sign of
recognition in a secret society : " The first Knight," says
the Hermit, who has found refuge in a house of chivalry,
"recognised me, as he believed, .by a sign which I bore
about me ; he had seen me in a place which he named."
But the Hermit evaded disclosures, for he was bent on
284
The Greater Chronicles
concealing his mission, even as through the whole of his
narrative he veils also his personality, though perhaps for
the express object that it should transpire in the subse-
quent texts.
The circumstances under which he came to begin his
story took place in Britain, 717 years after the Passion of
Christ. It is to be inferred that prior to his mission he
knew nothing concerning the Mystery of the Holy Graal,
though he did know of his lineage, which may be intended
according to the flesh or according to the mystical spirit,
if its reference is to the grades of his initiation. On
Maunday Thursday, after the office of Tenebra^ the
Grand Master awoke him from sleep and gave him a
book to ease his doubts on the subject of the Trinity.
His immediate experience thereafter was the possession of
a further gift, which was that of an infinity of tongues.
He began reading the book and continued till Good
Friday, when he celebrated a Mass of the Presanctified ;
between the breaking of the Host over the Chalice and
his reception of the elements he was transported to the
Third Heaven, and there was enabled to understand
the Trinitarian Dogma by the dilucid contemplation of
the Blessed and Glorious Trinity, with its distinction of
Persons combined in the mystery of their Unity. In
other words, this was the ecstasy of the Eucharist conse-
quent upon his initiation into the sacramental power and
grace enshrined in the Book of the Holy Graal. After
Mass he placed the book in the Eucharistic dovecote, or
tabernacle, with the intention not to reopen it till Easter
Sunday, when he found that it had been abstracted
strangely, and he undertook a wonderful pilgrimage in
search of it. The explanation of this disappearance is
perhaps that the Mystery of the Graal is of that which
was buried with Christ and with Him rises, and the sub-
sequent communication of the priest signifies that Christ
is placed spiritually in many sepulchres.
That he might be directed rightly on his journey, the
Hermit was led by an animal which combined the charac-
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
teristics of the lamb, the dog, the fox and the lion ; it
was in fact that questing beast which reappears in later
romance, and, according to its mystical sense, is explained
by the Longer Prose Perceval. Ultimately he recovered the
book ; and this restoration was followed by a vision of our
Saviour, who ordained its transcription, and on Ascension
Day the original was reassumed into heaven. It will be
seen that no pains are spared to exalt the work which
follows this introduction ; it is of mysterious and divine
origin ; a parchment copy is produced for earthly pur-
poses by the highest of all ordinations ; and as regards
its source and nature it takes precedence of everything,
even the canonical gospels.
The Doctrine of the Trinity was the great crux and
mystery which seems to have exercised the minds of
those who had entered the Path of Sanctity at the period
immediately preceding the literature of the Holy Graal.
It was the triumph of Faith to accept it, and he for whom
it presented no difficulties had attained a very high grade
of illumination. The hermit of the prologue to the
Book of the Holy Graal is moved profoundly by the
question, and its solution is the great incentive which is
offered him when he sets out on his pilgrimage to recover
the vanished book, which, in spite of the content exhibited
by its assumed transcript, is intended of itself — as we
have seen — to allay his doubts on the subject. We
should remember that in the year 1150 the Church had
established the Festival of the Most Holy Trinity, and
it was a quarter of a century later that the transformed
Graal legends began to manifest on the horizon of
romantic literature.
286
The Greater Chronicles
II
ANEW CONSIDERATION CONCERNING THE
BRANCHES OF THE CHRONICLE
Not the least difficulty in the Book of the Holy Graa/,
regarded as a work of " truth in the art " of its particular
mystery, is the divergence exhibited by the extant manu-
scripts. These differences meet us, perhaps chiefly,
at the inception of the story, though they are with us
even at the end. In respect of the latter there are texts
which incorporate a distinct romance which is impertinent
to the design of the story. In respect of the former, it
should be understood that it is of the essence of the
whole design to make a beginning from the same point
of departure at which Robert de Borron started his
metrical romance, and all recensions present therefore
some kind of prose version reflecting his narrative. One
of them — and it is the most available of the printed texts
— has only moderately grave variations from the Lesser
Holy Graal up to that epoch of the story when the com-
pany of Joseph of Arimathaea set out on their journey
westward ; but another presents a brief summary which
scarcely stands for the original. It is not part of my
province to express opinions belonging to the domain of
textual criticism, but I think that the design of the Book
of the Holy Graal is represented better and more typically
by a manuscript like that which was made use of by Dr.
Furnivall for the Early English Text Society, and this is
the summarised form, than it is by a manuscript like
that which Hucher selected for the first printed edition,
and this is the extended version.
The incorporation of De Borron elements serves one
purpose which is material from my own point of view, as
it sets in relief the distinction ab origine symboli between
the actuating motives of the two cycles of literature. It
will be remembered that in the metrical romance and its
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
later reflections the narrative is broken rudely at that
moment when the horizon has begun to expand by an
inspired resolution of the company to part into several
groups and proceed westward separately. Three subse-
quent divisions were involved hereby, and these Robert
de Borron promised to expound in their proper order
when he received true reports concerning them. The
author of the Book of the Holy Graal undertook to
supply these missing branches, but as the results differ,
and in no light manner, from the manifest intent of De
Borron, it may be deduced that they are not the real
history, as this might have been set forth by the pious
minstrel. On his part there was probably no design to
bring Joseph of Arimathaea either to the Vaux d* Avar on
or another part of Britain. The doubtful meaning of
some of his lines must be taken in connection with the
general scheme of his narrative. That scheme was to
establish the mystery of sanctity in great seclusion under
the government of a single keeper, with a life protracted
through the centuries, until the time of its possible mani-
festation came. The Lesser Holy Graal is a reasonably
faithful version of his nearly complete poem, though it
is doubtful regarding Joseph's final destination. The
Early History of Merlin is also faithful to what remains
of De Borron's second metrical romance. Of the Didot
Perceval we cannot speak so certainly, but in several
points about which we have materials for judgment —
and more especially regarding Moses — it does not corre-
spond properly. It is even possible that the Didot
Perceval is a speculative completion of the trilogy,
characterised by remarkable insight, and yet without any
accurate notion of De Borron's design, this being mani-
fested imperfectly by his extant literary remains.
It will be understood, therefore, that the Book of the
Holy Graal, or the great romance which follows the
parable of the prologue, begins, in the codex here followed,
with a short account of the chief incidents in the life of
our Saviour and the condition of Palestine at the period.
288
The Greater Chronicles
It repeats the familiar story of the Lesser Holy Graal,
but sometimes, as we have seen, only by way of summary,
and always with many variations. The fact that Joseph
is married and has a son in his infancy at the time of the
Passion of Christ may be taken as the first important
point of difference ; he is named after his father, and to
distinguish between them the orthography adopted by the
romance to designate the son is Josephes, for which in
the present account I shall substitute Joseph II. The next
point of difference, with which we are also acquainted
already, concerns the identification of the Holy Graal
with the dish of the Paschal Supper — en quoi li fiex dieu
avoit mangle — instead of with the Eucharistic vessel of
sacrifice ; but it should be said that there is another text
which follows the description in the Lesser Holy Graal.
The circumstances under which the Great Hallow was
discovered, after the apprehension of Christ, also vary,
and in place of its abstraction by a Jew, who carries the
Hallow to Pilate, it is found by Joseph himself in
the house where the Pasch was eaten, and is removed
by him to be kept for a memorial of the Master. As
in the other romances, it is used to collect the blood,
which, however, is done no longer on Calvary, but in the
sepulchre itself. The general lines established by Robert
de Borron are followed as regards the imprisonment of
Joseph, the circumstances under which he was released
by Vespasian after a term of forty-two years, and the
vengeance wreaked upon the Jews. All lapse of years
notwithstanding, Joseph is reunited to his wife and son,
is baptized, with a great number of his relatives, and he
is directed by Christ to go with those who will follow
him into distant countries, carrying neither gold, silver,
nor any material possession except the Holy Graal. It is
after this point that the prototype of Robert de Borron
is abandoned once and for all. The first destination-
reached by way of Bethany and the Wood of Ambush-
is the city of Sarras, situated in a country of the same
name on the confines of Egypt. From this land it is
289 T
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
stated that the Saracens originated; the people are described
as worshippers of the sun, moon and planets. It is also
this place which is termed in later romances the spiritual
city, though it is not on account of the faith found in its
citizens — who appear to have been a perverse nation at the
beginning and end — but because, according to the story,
it contained the palais esperiteus, which name was given it
by the prophet Daniel, who emblazoned it on the door
thereof. The story is apocryphal, but the design is to
show that even the seers of Israel were aware of the
coming of the Graal, for it was in this palace that the
Eucharist was first consecrated. It was the witness on
the dry land, as the ship of Solomon was the witness on
the open sea.
At Sarras Joseph found Evalach, its aged king, in
great trouble through an invasion of his country by the
Egyptians under Ptolemy. Joseph commended his con-
version as a certain guarantee of his victory, but the
king, though not disinclined, was not baptized actually
until his enemies were dispersed with final slaughter.
The power operating in his favour rested chiefly in a
cross painted on his shield by Joseph. The story of the
war and its wonders occupies a substantial part of the
narrative, and before Joseph departed on his further
journey westward the whole population of the country
appears to have embraced Christianity. Several churches
were built in the city or its vicinity, bishops and priests
were ordained, and masses were celebrated therein.
England is the Promised Land which the special
providence of the story has allocated to the spiritual and
material lineage of Joseph of Arimathaea ; and after the
departure from Sarras the sole concern of all the involved
adventures is, separately or collectively, to bring the
various characters to this country and to reunite them
therein, the evangelisation of the existing inhabitants being
the palmary term of all. Speaking of the rank and file,
apart from several of the more important personages,
the good Christians are transported hither miraculously
290
The Greater Chronicles
on a garment belonging to the second Joseph, but those
who are imperfect come by ship. Some of the great
heroes arrive independently under circumstances which
I shall describe in the considerations to each allotted.
Joseph of Arimathasa reaches the general bourne, and
though the superior importance of his son causes him to
be almost effaced, we hear of him from time to time
during long years of continued existence. At length he
left this world to be united with Christ, to whom all his
love was dedicated. He was buried at the Abbey of
the Cross in Scotland, for which one codex substitutes
Glastonbury.
There is a general sense in which the Book of the Holy
Graal — like the metrical romance of De Borron — is the
Book of the Divine Voice which speaks from the Sacred
Vessel, though this is not used to pronounce oracles or to
separate the good from the evil as it does in the earlier
text. The difficulties which are raised by the story
regarding that Mystery of Faith which it exists to show
forth are so grave and so numerous that I must be
satisfied with the registration of the fact and its illustra-
tion by one instance. The whole notion of the Eucharist
is changed by the supposition that, on occasion, it is
administered to angels, for by no hypothesis can Christ
be regarded as their Saviour.
Seeing that there is no clear division of episodes in the
story, so that one section can be separated definitely from
another, I shall attempt only a general grouping. The
master-branch of the whole prodigal romance is that
which embraces the mission of Joseph II. — this is of the
essence, and all else is, in comparison, of the accidental
order. About this central figure the wonder of the
Graal converges and the confused cloud of marvellous
incidents ; from the first even to the last, he is thus
steeped in a light of mystery that " never was on land or
sea." Prior to the arrival at Sarras a command was re-
ceived from the Son of God to build an ark, similar to
that of the Old Covenant, for the reception of the Holy
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Graal. Public devotions were to take place before it,
but only Joseph and his son had a right to open the
Shrine, to look into the Reliquary and to take it in their
hands. Two chosen men were deputed to carry the
Ark on their shoulders when the company was on the
march. The intention was evidently to invest the new
symbol with the same authority as that palladium which
once belonged to Israel. To provide sustenance for the
band during the journey, each disciple — after the daily
service of prayer — found in his lodging the food which
he desired in abundance, but it is not said that it was
provided by the Holy Graal.
While the conversion of the King and the issue of the
war were still pending at Sarras, things of far other im-
portance were taking place in respect of the Sacramental
Mystery under the charge of Joseph and his son. The
pilgrims on their advent had been lodged in that building
which was named the Spiritual Palace. The inhabitants
of Sarras did not know why it had received this desig-
nation, but the arrival of the Christian cohort was to
reveal the prophetic mystery — firstly, by the presence
of the Ark and the Graal therein, and, secondly, by the
sacred wonders which accompanied the ordination of
Joseph II., with Christ manifested visibly as the Celebrant-
in-chief. In that Palace, on the day following their
arrival, the Holy Spirit advised Joseph the father that
his son had been chosen to guard the Graal, as the Aaron
of the new Rite, that he was to be ordained by the
highest consecration, and was to transmit the priesthood
to those whom he deemed worthy thereof. Joseph II.
received also the power to hand on the Sacred Vessel to
whomsoever he would, and it is to be inferred that he
committed everything in the plenary sense — as if Christ
said to His successor : " My peace I leave with you ;
My peace I give unto you."
When the company were worshipping before the Ark in
the Spiritual Palace, the Holy Spirit descended in still fire,
as at another Pentecost, and entered into the mouth of each
292
The Greater Chronicles
one of them, like the Eucharist of some final dispensation
which has not been declared on earth. Jt communicated,
however, the gift of silence instead of the gift of tongues.
A Voice also spoke and though apparently it was that of
the Spirit, it was also the voice of Christ. The discourse
was memorable enough, but I can speak only of its
end, when the younger Joseph was directed to approach
and receive the most great honours which could be
conferred on earthly creature. He opened the door
of the Ark and beheld a man clothed in a terrible
vestment of scarlet flame. There were also five angels
apparelled after the same manner, each having six wings
of fire, like the vision of Ezekiel. In their right hands
they held various symbols of the Passion — about which we
have heard already — and each in his left carried an en-
sanguined sword. The human figure was that of Christ,
with the five wounds upon Him. It is said by the text
that the Ark had been magnified strangely, so that it
would hold the Divine Personalities of the vision : but I
conclude rather that when the door was opened, those
who were empowered to behold looked as into a seering-
glass, which contains at need the earths of the universe
and the earths of the starry heavens, with all that
dwell thereon. The state of the second Joseph is shown
by the words addressed to his father, praying that he
should touch him in nowise, lest the speaker be drawn
from the joy of his entrancement. That which he next
beheld was the crucifixion itself, presented in ritual form,
with the angels for the actors therein. It seemed even
as in one of the Greater Mysteries which I have seen with
my own eyes, when the Adept Master is set on a cross
of dedication and the officers of the high ceremonial are
those who combine to immolate him. But the design
in the case under notice was rather to certify concerning
the Vessel of the Graal, for the side of Christ was
pierced and the sang real poured therein. The scene
closed and a new scene was opened, this time more
especially before the eyes of Joseph the father. What
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he beheld was an altar within the Ark draped in white
over red, bearing the Sacred Dish, the nails of transfixion
and the ensanguined head of the Lance. These objects
were arranged on the epistle and gospel sides, but in
the centre — or place of consecration — covered with a
white corporal — there was a rich golden vessel with a
covercle, also of gold, and it is recorded that all pre-
cautions were taken that the contents should remain
hidden. A procession of angels entered with lights,
aspergillus, thurible, incense-boat, and then — out of all
knowledge — one carrying a head, as I suppose, on a
salver, and another with a drawn sword. This pageant
went about the house, as if for a Rite of Consecration,
the Graal being also carried, and Christ entered, even
as the Priest of the Rite, clad in sacramental robes for
the celebration of Mass. The circumambulation being
finished for the cleansing of the whole place — which, in
spite of its name, had been the abode of evil and the
spirit thereof — Christ told Joseph II. that he was to
receive the Eucharist, and, as if constituted a secret
pope, he was made and ordained sovereign bishop reign-
ing over the world of Christendom. He was clothed
with rich episcopal vestments and set in an episcopal
chair, which the text says was still preserved at Sarras,
where it proved to be another Siege Perilous and
whosoever sat therein was maimed or destroyed utterly.
Joseph was anointed by Christ, and with the oil which was
used for this purpose the Kings of England were con-
secrated in later years up to the time of Uther Pendragon ;
but it was missing at his coronation. The ring of
investiture, given to the prelate thus hallowed strangely,
could be counterfeited by no human skill, nor could
words express the virtues contained in its jewel.
When the ceremony was at length over and the divine
discourse had explained one by one the spiritual signi-
ficance of each part of his clothing, Joseph II. was
instructed by Christ to consecrate the sacred elements,
and it thus came about that the people of the new
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exodus communicated for the first time : but the Host
which was elevated by Joseph was the body of a child and
that which was received by the faithful, in the mouth of
each one among them, was living and undivided flesh. The
administration to the cohort of worshippers was, however,
performed by angels, one of whom took the paten to-
gether with the chalice and placed both of them in the
Holy Vessel of the Graal. Whether the Precious Blood
adhered to the Eucharistic Vessel and the content of the
Reliquary thus suffered diminution we do not know, nor the
purpose otherwise of the ceremony, which, fortunately for
the spiritual side of la haute convenance, is not repeated
either in the romance itself or anywhere in the literature.
Thus was the second Joseph consecrated in the super-
apostolical degree, and thus did he see — at least in the
sense of the story — all Christ's mysteries openly. The
issues which are raised by the narrative are much more
complicated than will be gathered from the preceding
summary. Scholarship has paid little heed to the im-
portance of the sacramental question and all connected
therewith, but it has not overlooked the pontifical supre-
macy which is ascribed to the reputed founder of
Christianity in Britain. While the ecclesiastical con-
sequence to these islands is perhaps the only thing which
can be said to stand forth clearly, it must be added
that if the intention was to make void one claim of the
Papacy, there was never a design so clouded and veiled
so sedulously. The brief for any secret pontificate is
proclaimed much less openly than the general brief for
the official Church, with all its ways and laws, as we are
acquainted with its body — politic and spiritual — at the
period. Still it is said expressly, in words ascribed to the
Master : (a) that Joseph has been chosen as the first pastor
of a new flock ; (£) that his eminence is comparable ex-
plicitly in the New Law with that of Moses, the Leader of
Israel, in the Law which had been now superseded ; (^)
that wherever he went, converting people and places,
he was there to consecrate bishops and ordain priests, who
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would have power to bind and loose, even as the
apostles ; and that, in fine (^/), to the younger Joseph was
committed the government of souls, but to the elder
that of bodies — the spiritual and temporal powers. It
does not appear especially that the latter ever exercised
his prerogative ; but it may be recalled that whereas
the first issue of the temporal power was after the
spiritual kind, the second was after the material — on
the one hand, Joseph II., who never married, whose
office was devised by election ; on the other, Galahad le
Fort, who became an earthly King, who was anointed with
the mystic oils by his brother Joseph, and who reigned
gloriously. We may speculate, but it will be all in vain,
as to what was in the mind of the author when he sub-
stituted a son for the father, and, as if further to confuse
the issues, gave both of them the same name. What-
ever the explanation may be, from that moment when
the younger man assumed the reins of government in
the spiritual degree, the older ceased to retain even the
shadow of power. As regards Galahad le Fort, his birth
took place in Britain, and it was foretold to his brother
in a vision that he would be the ancestor of a holy lineage
of many men of religion, who should maintain the name
of our Saviour in all honour and all power throughout
these islands.
His great election and his association in the highest
notwithstanding, the second Joseph was not intended to
escape without the purgation of suffering. When he
and his company were at Orcauz, in the district of Sarras,
he was punished for attempting to bind a devil who
was hovering over the dead bodies of certain Saracens ;
for this indiscretion, a great vindicating angel, with a
marvellous countenance, drove a spear into his thighs and
left the weapon therein. Subsequently, he was healed by
another angel, who drew out the head of the spear. That
which Joseph II. should have contrived was apparently
the conversion of the heathen, and in this having
failed he was not to intervene between the destroyer and
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the victims. I mention these matters, firstly, because the
office of wounding in the thighs recurs so continually in
the romances, and, secondly, to note that for some obscure
reason the injury in question never befalls the questing
knights. The Lance used on this occasion is also im-
portant because of its after-history, for it was destined
to prove the beginning of those great marvels which
would occur in the land of Britain. At that time it is
said that the Lance will drop blood and will strike — also
in both thighs — another personage of the mystery, a
knight full of charity and chastity, who will suffer for
as many years as Joseph had carried the weapon in his
own wound for days. These, on the computation of the
victim, proved to be twenty-two. The reference is here
to King Pellehan, whose wounding is narrated, as we
know, in the Huth Merlin, and who is healed in the Quest
of Galahad ; the wounding in question is the Dolorous
Stroke inflicted by the poor knight Balyn ; and it follows
that the Book of the Holy Graal gives an origin of the
Lance-Hallow which either differs from that of all other
texts or it has omitted to mention that the angel of the
judgment used the Spear of the Passion.
When the company of pilgrims at length reached the
sea-shore, from which they must cross over to Britain,
those who bore the Ark of the Graal on their shoulders
walked over the intervening waters as if upon the dry
land ; of the others, those who were in a state of grace
crossed on the shirt of the second Joseph, as if on a raft ;
but the evil livers were left to fare as they could till ships
could be found to carry them. I am not concerned with
the events which followed the arrival of all and sundry in
the promised land of their inheritance, but as regards
Joseph II., his evangelical journeys through England,
Scotland, Wales, Ireland and, as it is said, other
strange countries, continue through the rest of the narrative,
till at last he visits King Evalach in an abbey which had
been founded by the latter and informs him of his own
immediate death on the following day. This occurs
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accordingly at the hour of prime next morning, and he
was buried in the abbey. So was Joseph II. gathered
into the Kingdom of the Father, and I pass now to the
history of one who was designed as a witness through
the centuries to that mystery which was from the begin-
ning of the Christian times, who, in fine, could enter into
his rest only through the arms of Galahad.
King Evalach received the name of Mordrains in
baptism, and he remained in his kingdom after Joseph
and his company continued their journey westward. The
design of the story, as we have seen, is, however, to
bring all its characters into la bloie Bretagne, and with this
object it puts the most complicated machinery in motion
for some of the palmary heroes. I must speak only con-
cerning the term in its attainment, omitting in the pre-
sent case the visions and the bodily transportations which
befell Mordrains for his further instruction and purga-
tion. He left Sarras ultimately and for ever, taking his
wife with him and three hundred barons, and proceeding
to the rescue of Joseph, whom a revelation had told him
was imprisoned by the King of North Wales. His own
realm was committed to the charge of the good knight
Aganore, who was to be King in his place and so to
remain if he did not return himself. He carried with
him the white shield by the help of which he overcame
the powers of Egypt, so that this also passed into the
West and was kept in perpetuity as one of the Lesser
Hallows. The journey took place by ship in the
ordinary way ; Joseph and his people were rescued in
due course, and of all their enemies not one was left alive.
For this providence public thanksgivings took place in
the presence of the Graal, the Ark of the New Covenant
being set open for the purpose. Evalach, who had ex-
perienced already the delicious effects which followed an
exposition of the Sacred Vessel, desired to see with his
own eyes the interior of that Sanctuary from which the
grace appeared to emanate. Though incapacitated by
wounds received in the recent combats, he went to the
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door of the Ark and looked in. He saw the Holy Dish
and the Chalice used for Eucharistic purposes. He saw
also Bishop Joseph clothed in the beautiful vestments in
which he had been consecrated by Christ. The romance
says that no mind could conceive and much less the
tongue express all that which was discovered to him. So
far he had been kneeling with head and shoulders bent
forward, but he now arose and pressed nearer. In vain
a voice issued from a burning cloud and warned him to
desist ; he advanced his head further, when paralysis and
blindness overtook him. Of all his members he pre-
served only the use of his tongue, and the first words
which he pronounced were those of adoration, even for
the misfortune which had befallen him and which he
also recognised that he deserved for surprising Divine
Secrets. Even at the price of his health, and of age-long
suffering thereafter, he would not have renounced the
knowledge which he had attained in the Ark. One of
the spectators asked what he had seen, and he answered :
u The end of the world, the Marvel of all marvels, the
Wisdom which is above wisdom, the King of every king."
The last wish recorded on the part of Evalach, who
henceforth was to be termed Mehaigne — that is to say,
the Maimed King — was that he should be carried to
a hermitage far from other habitation, as the world and
he had no further need for one another. The second
Joseph approved, because the day of Evalach's death would
not be witnessed even by his children's children. He was
carried on a litter to the hermitage and placed before
the altar, where he would be in the presence of the Body
of the Lord whenever Mass was celebrated thereat.
Upon the site of the hermitage a fair abbey was built
subsequently, and there Mehaigne remained till the com-
ing of the younger Galahad — or, as the chronology of the
story states, for 200 years. On the day which preceded
the death of Joseph II. that First Bishop of Christendom
anointed the King's White Shield with his own blood,
thus making a second cross upon it. It was reserved for
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the Knight Galahad, and should any one attempt to use it
in the meantime he would repent it quickly. Mehaigne
regained his sight so that he could behold this shield and
the ceremony of the Unspotted Sacrifice.
With the story of Evalach there is connected that of
his wife, Queen Sarracinte. While her husband was in
warfare with the hosts descended from Egypt, she sent
for Joseph to ask news concerning him, praying the
apostle to intercede with God and to turn him to her
own belief. Her mother had been converted through the
offices of a certain hermit, and this, assisted by a vision,
led to her own christening. Thereafter she was per-
mitted to see a white box which was kept by the elder
lady among treasures of jewels, and on being opened it
proved to contain our Saviour under the element of
bread. The mother received the Host, for it proved
that she was departing this life, and she charged her
daughter to keep the box secretly, and so have Christ
every day in her company, as by a high dispensation had
been permitted in her own case. When she was dead
Queen Sarracinte went to the hermit, obtained Christ
from him, as a sacred treasure, received the Host in the secret
tabernacle and performed her devotions in Its presence.
Outside this amazing reservation, the point of impor-
tance is that although Joseph II. was, by the hypothesis
of the story, the first priest to consecrate the elements of
the Eucharist, this was being done already — apparently
long before — by a hermit in Sarras, who must have
derived from the ordinary apostles. There is a suggestion
of strange implicits in the names of the next character
which I have placed on my list for inclusion in these
major branches. He was Seraphe in his days as a paynim,
carrying an axe keen as a serpent of fire and evoking in
his need out of the invisible the vision of a white Knight
mounted on a white horse, from which he dealt arch-
natural destruction. In baptism, with the others who
elected to be redeemed out of Sarras, he assumed the
name of Nasciens, as if in a new generation he had been
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received into the militia crucifera evangelica, with a mission
to enter the West and preach the Gospel with his sword.
Seraphe was the son-in-law of Evalach the king — a large
man, strong-boned and broad-shouldered. Great and
many were the miracles which brought him by slow stages
to the Isles of Britain, but I will speak only of his sojourn
on the Turning Island, from which he was rescued by
that Mystic Ship of Solomon which fills so important an
office in the Quest of Galahad.
Nasciens watched the vessel coming to him fast over the
sea ; it was richer than any other in the world, but no
one was visible therein. He prepared to go on board,
when he saw golden letters in the Chaldaic tongue giving
warning that those who entered must be full of faith and
clean in every respect. He was deterred at first, but
after fervent prayer he entered, believing that it had
been sent by God. He found therein a mysterious
couch, having at its head a crown of gold and at the
foot a marvellous sword, which was drawn ten inches
out of the scabbard. Connected with the bed there
were three spindles of strange colourings, though not
as the result of artificial tincture ; one was red, another
white, and the third green. The story of the Ship is
recounted at great length, and to express it as shortly
as possible, the royal prophet of Israel had learned by
a message from heaven that the last knight of his lineage
would exceed all other chivalry as the sun outshines
the moon. By the sage counsel of his wife, he built
this ship to last for 4000 years, with the double object
of making known to Galahad not only the royalty of
his descent, but the fact that the wise king was aware of
his birth in due time. The building was accomplished
in six months, and then the Queen told him to provide
King David's sword as an arm of might for his descen-
dant. It was adorned with a new handle, pommel and
sheath — all of great virtues — and a writing about it said
that no man should draw it with impunity, save one who
passed all others in prowess and perfection of virtue.
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Solomon would have also provided rich hangings, but
was deterred by his wife, who testified that they must
be foul and of her own making, till another woman
should, in the coming time, provide draperies that were
glorious. The high office was reserved therefore for the
most fair, faithful and unearthly sister of Perceval.
In this connection, I may say that one of the side-
problems of the whole narrative is that in spite of the
wonderful counsel which Solomon receives from his wife,
and in spite of the sacred, exalted meaning attached to
the ship which was built by her directions, she is
described as a woman who had deceived him and had
embittered him regarding her sex.
The wooden bed seen by Nasciens was also placed
in the Ship, and the sword was laid thereon as well as
the crown, which was also that of David. By the same
unaccountable directions the three spindles were of wood
derived from the Tree of Knowledge in the manner
here following. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit ;
the apple which she gathered brought with it a branch ;
the fruit was separated by Adam and the branch remained
with Eve, who preserved it in their exile as a memorial
of her misfortune. It was planted by her and became
a great tree, which — both within and without — was
white as snow. One day, when they were seated beneath
it lamenting their unfortunate condition, Eve called it
the Tree of Death, but a voice bade them comfort one
another, for life was much nearer than death — whereupon
they termed it by substitution the Tree of Life. They
planted cuttings thereof, which grew and flourished ;
these were white like the parent tree, but after the
conception of Abel they all turned green, bearing flowers
and fruit. It was under the first tree that Abel was mur-
dered— when it changed from green to red and no
longer bore flowers or fruit ; in later times it was called
the Tree of Counsel and of Comfort.
When the Ship was fully garnished, Solomon placed
a letter beneath the crown, giving warning to his de-
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scendant against the wiles of women and asking to
be held in his remembrance ; he recounted also the
building. The Ship was launched ; the king saw in a
vision how a great company of angels descended and
entered therein, as it sailed far out of sight.
Nasciens learned further that the Ship typified the
Holy Church of Christ, and as the latter has only
faith and truth therein, so in its symbol no faithless
men could have part ; confession and repentance were
necessary qualifications to enter Church or Ship. The
inscriptions in the Vessel were Holy Scripture ; in a
word, as the text suggested, it was a symbol rather than
a ship. The sea over which it sailed signified the world ;
the bed was the Holy Altar, on which the Divine Son
is consecrated and offered daily ; in another sense, it
was also the Cross of Christ. The white spindle meant
Christ's virginity, the red one His humility and love,
while the green one signified His patience.
So far as regards the Ship of Solomon, and in respect
of Nasciens himself, before closing his story, I must speak
of two visitations which befell him. Soon after his
conversion he was filled with the same desire to know
.the Mysteries of the Graal for which Mordrains paid
afterwards so heavily and yet was so well recompensed ;
he raised up the paten which covered the Sacred Vessel
and by his own account he beheld the foundations of
knowledge and religion, the beginning of all bounty
and all gentility. We may remember here the old
poet who said that Christ was uThe first true gentle-
man that ever breathed " ; and doubtless the sacramental
mystery is also a mystery of courtesy. Nasciens was
blinded for his presumption and remained in this afflic-
tion till the healing of Joseph II. from the wounding of
the angel. His second visitation occurred on board the
Ship of Solomon, wherein he had been united with his
son and subsequently with King Mordrains. To the latter
he showed the Sword of David, but when the King took
it in his hands the weapon broke in two pieces and re-
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joined as suddenly. At this moment they were warned
to leave the Ship, and in the act of obeying Nasciens was
wounded grievously between the shoulders by the Sword.
He regarded this as a chastisement in loving-kindness
for his sins, but the episode is made more intelligible by
another codex, which shows how he was tempted to draw
the Sword from its sheath and use it as his defence against
a giant when no other weapon was available. It broke in
the mere brandishing and so remained, but it was rejoined,
unaccountably enough, by the handling of Mordrains.
Towards the close of the story, a certain King Varlans
too finds the Sword of David in the Ship of Solomon and
uses it to slay Lambor, who was one of the twelve sons
of Brons and at that time Keeper of the Graal. There
followed great sorrow and suffering in the lands of both
rulers ; both were ruined by the stroke ; and Varlans, on
restoring the weapon to the Ship and therein sheathing it,
fell down dead. It will be seen that a kind of enchant-
ment thus befalls these parts of Britain, though the Book
of the Holy Graal is rather the cycle of adventures than
that of enchantments. The Sword was to remain sheathed
until drawn by a maiden — that is to say, by the sister of
Perceval.
There is another story of a sword which belongs
properly to a different branch of the romance, but it
may be mentioned in this place. Joseph of Arimathasa
is wounded, as usual, in the thigh by a false steward,
leaving half of the sword in the wound. With the upper
half Joseph heals a Saracen Knight, whom he has converted
newly, and then uses it to withdraw the point from his
own flesh ; it comes out unstained by blood, and Joseph
foretells that the two parts shall not be joined together
till he arrives who shall end the adventures of the Graal.
This is the Hallow which is resoldered by Galahad at
Corbenic when the Holy Quest has ended.
So far as Nasciens is concerned the remainder of the
story deals more especially with his deeds of valour in
connection with the conversion of Britain, which he
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reached at length by ship and was instrumental in bring-
ing over those who had been left on the further shore by
reason of their departure from grace. His death took
place prior to that of the second Joseph, and he was buried
in the abbey of white monks where Mordrains awaited
his end.
Celidoine, the son of Nasciens, is in one sense a lesser
character, but in the symbolism of the story he seems to
stand for something that is important. He is said to
have been born under the happiest of starry influences
and was himself a reader of the stars, from which he
drew presages and on one occasion ensured a Christian
victory in consequence. The meaning of his name itself
is explained to be the Gift of Heaven. One day Mor-
drains had a vision concerning him, and therein he was
represented by a lake, into which Christ came and washed
His hands and feet. This signified that God visited
Celidoine daily because of his good thoughts and actions.
Nine streams issued from the lake, typifying the boy's
descendants. Into eight of them Christ also passed and
made a similar lustration. Now the ninth was troubled
at the beginning — foul even and turbulent — but in the
middle it was translucent as a jewel and at the mouth
more sweet and pleasant than thought can picture.
Before entering this stream Christ laid aside all His vest-
ments and was immersed wholly — that is to say, in the
good works of Galahad. The troubled source signified
the stain on that knight by reason of his conception, and
the removal of the vestments meant that Christ would dis-
cover to the haut prince all his mysteries, permitting him
in fine to penetrate the entire secrets of the Graal.
The external life of Celidoine, who reached Britain
by himself in a boat, does not concern us except in
broadest outline. As his father wrought with the sword
of earthly knighthood in the cause of Christ, so did the
son fight with the sword of the spirit — that is to say,
with the tongue of eloquence, and paynim clerks and
sages could not withstand him. Among many others he
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converted the Persian King Label and was married to his
daughter. As he was a prodigy from the beginning and
was knighted in his eighth year, he is comparable to a
sanctified Merlin.
One section of the romance which certainly calls to be
included among the major branches, and may even be
considered by some as important of all, has been reserved
here till the last, and this is the permanent House of the
Holy Graal. During the keepership of Joseph II. the
Vessel, and the Ark which contained it, shared in the
travels of the apostolate, but it found a place of rest
during the reign of his successor — who was Alain, as we
shall learn later. With a hundred companions he had
proceeded to the realm of Forayne, where the King was
a knight of worth, but a paynim and also a leper. He
inquired whence his visitors came, and was told from
Jerusalem ; he asked further whether his disease could be
cured, and was assured that it was more than possible if
he forsook the evil law and became a Christian. To this
the King consented, and after his conversion and baptism
he was healed by the sight of the Graal, this being the
only occasion on which the Vessel was shown to a stranger.
It is important also to note that though Alain was the
Keeper of the Hallows, he was not an ordained priest
and he employed one for the purpose of baptizing. It
follows, therefore, that the episcopal functions of Joseph
II. did not devolve on his successor, and it is certain also
that there was no sacerdotal character attributed to the
still later wardens — or, among others, to King Pelles,
who was the Keeper in the days of Galahad. The new
convert was christened Alphasan, and he proposed to
build a castle for the reception of the Graal, to marry his
daughter to Joshua, the brother of Alain, and to make
him the heir of his kingdom, if the Graal remained
therein. Hereto Alain consented ; the castle was built ;
and at its completion they found an instruction em-
blazoned in red letters on one of the gates, saying that it
should be called Corbenic, the meaning of which, as we
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know, is the Treasury of the Holy Vessel. This is on the
authority of the text and it is not an unreasonable persua-
sion to believe that the author knew what he intended to
convey by the word which he seems to have compounded ;
but as it has not given universal satisfaction we have
variants, of which some are as follows : Carbonek = Caer
Banawc — the Castle of the Corners, or the Square Castle,
but this has nothing to commend it ; Corbenic = De Corpore
Benedicto, which is high phantasy, but is charming in that
sense ; Cor-arbenig = the Sovereign Chair, which is perfect
past all desiring if the House of the Graal was the seat of
a secret doctrine.
The Holy Vessel was placed in a fair chamber, as if on
an Altar of Repose, and on the next Sunday Joshua was
married to the King's daughter. His coronation also
took place, and in the feast which followed the company
was replenished by the grace of the Graal with all
manner of delicacies. That same night the King made
the fatal mistake of sleeping in the palace which he had
built, and he awakened to witness a Mass of the Graal,
celebrated in his room apparently. It was, I suppose, at
the term of the service that the Vessel is said to have
been removed suddenly, and there appeared one wearing
the likeness of humanity but composed as if it were of
flame. He upbraided the King for reposing in a House
so holy as that where the Vessel was worshipped, and as
a warning to all who should come after he smote him
through both thighs with a sword. The sword was with-
drawn, the figure vanished, and Alphasan died ten days
afterwards. It was in this way, and at first by the voice
of the victim, that Corbenic came to be called the Palace
of Adventure ; many knights attempted to sleep therein
subsequently, but they were always found dead in the
morning, one strong hero of Arthur's chivalry excepted,
and he suffered for it otherwise.
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III
THE MINOR BRANCHES OF THE BOOK
OF THE HOLT GRAAL
The things which remain over from the last section for
consideration at the term of this inquest are chiefly
derivatives from the metrical romance of De Borron,
including those further adventures and histories which
he promised to provide if he could. It was not sufficient
for the putative Walter Map that England was the
spiritual patrimony guaranteed to the eldest son of the
new Church of Christ and the first Bishop of Christen-
dom, but that he might exalt it further he transferred
thereto several palmary episodes which in the work of
his precursor had been allocated to the regions on the
hither side of Syria, or wherever he brought the company
of Joseph to its first prolonged halt. The most im-
portant of these postponements is the doom which befell
Moses ; it is also told differently, and is connected with
a collateral story concerning one who was fated to suffer a
similar punishment, of which the Lesser Chronicles know
nothing. This personage is Simeon, who is sometimes
said to be the father of Moses, and he is first referred to
when the company are crossing the channel on their way
to Britain. Simeon and his son sink then into the water
because they have broken their vows of purity, and they
have to be saved by the others. Long after the arrival
of the whole fellowship at the term of their voyaging
we hear first of the Graal table, at which Joseph II. and
Brons sit together with a wide space between them ; but
the explanation of the empty seat differs from that of
De Borron, signifying the place occupied by Christ at the
Last Supper. It can be so occupied only by one of greater
sanctity than are those at the Second Table. It follows
that for the purposes of this romance the consecration
of Galahad was greater than that of the first Bishop of
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Christendom, who held the warrant of his ordination
from Christ Himself. When the information was made
public, Simeon and Moses speculated as to its truth and
reason. Being sinners, they regarded it as false, and
Moses undertook to occupy the seat if permission could
be obtained from Joseph II. The latter was told by
those who were parties to the conspiracy that a man
counted among the sinners was worthy to take his seat
at the Graal. Joseph was much astonished, knowing
under what circumstances he had crossed over to Britain,
but his informants persisted, and though he could not
believe in the goodness of Moses, he gave him leave to
try. This was without reference to the voice of the
Graal, which was consulted on the occasion according to
Robert de Borron, and it illustrates my previous state-
ment that in the later romance the Sacred Vessel does not
pronounce oracles or act as a touchstone. Joseph, how-
ever, warned Moses himself, when the time came for the
trial, not to make the attempt, unless he knew that he
was worthy, as he would repent thereof, seeing that it
was the place of the Son of God. Moses was struck with
terror but still persisted, and, before he had sat long,
seven burning hands came from Heaven, set him on fire
like a dry bush, and carried him off through the air.
Shame fell upon his sinful companions, who inquired
whether he was lost or saved ; they were told that they
should see him again, and that then they would know
his fate.
At a later period, when the company were approaching
the forest of Darnantes, they were directed that they
must enter therein, and were told that they should see
Moses. In a valley they came presently upon a great
house and, passing through open gates, they entered a
great hall, wherein burned a great fire. Out of the fire
came a voice, which begged Joseph to pray for the
speaker, that his sufferings might be alleviated by the
mercy of God. This was the voice of Moses. Joseph II.,
who was present, demanded whether he was saved or lost,
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and the answer was that still he had hope of grace. He
had been transported by devils, who meant certainly to
plunge him in hell ; but a hermit compelled them to
release him, as in spite of his sin he had not deserved
endless torment. The fire was destined to encompass
him till he was delivered by that good knight who would
end the adventures of the Graal. Alain, who was also
present, asked more specifically who he was, and was told
that it was his cousin Moses. Simeon also spoke to him,
when he was advised, and Canaan — another of the evil
fellowship — that they should seek to be better than
they were, and to be cleansed from sin by the Bishop.
Joseph II. and Alain prayed for Moses, that his suffering
might be lessened. A beneficent rain then came down
into the fire, softening its fervour by extinguishing half
thereof, so that the poor sufferer was eased greatly.
Simeon inquired how long such flames might endure,
and was told by Moses that it would not be so long as
he deserved, because he would be released by Galahad,
who would not alone end the adventures of the Graal
but all those of Britain.
In spite of the warning which came to them from a
source that illustrated so bitterly the neglect of warnings,
Simeon and Canaan not only remained without grace but
made haste to complete with that which remained for them
to do in the order of heinous offence. Joseph of Arima-
thasa and some part of the Christian cohort had now entered
Scotland, where we have seen long ago that they were
sustained by the Holy Graal. In this benefit of refec-
tion Simeon and Canaan were precluded by their condition
from sharing, with the result that they had nothing to eat
for two days and nights. Simeon claimed that he had
done more for God than either Joseph or Petrus, and
that he was suffering for their sins ; on the other hand,
Canaan declared that he was punished for the deficiencies
of his own immediate kindred. Simeon covenanted to
take vengeance on Petrus and Canaan on his brethren.
The issue was that, grievously and almost incurably,
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Petrus was wounded in the neck with a poisoned knife, and
the twelve brothers of Canaan were despatched with a
sword. The visitation of these crimes is varied strangely
in respect of severity, and it illustrates, I think, some
vague and undeclared sanctity in the mission of Petrus.
If so, it is a reflection from Robert de Borron, though in
the later story there is no brief from Heaven, or other war-
rant, as the evident seal of mission. In any case, he who only
wounded Petrus was transported, like Moses, by spirits of
fire, while he who was a twelve-fold fratricide was, by the
comparative mercy of earthly judgment, only buried
alive, with time to repent before death overtook him
almost in the ordinary course. Long and long afterwards,
when Galahad le Fort, who had become King of Wales, was
riding through that country, he saw a great fire burning
in a dry ditch. A voice came therefrom which proved
to be that of Simeon, who was expiating in this manner
his outrage on Petrus. At the same time — and again
like Moses — he was not beyond redemption, and he en-
treated his auditor to found a place of religion, wherein
monks could pray for his soul. Galahad le Fort
promised to erect an abbey and to be buried himself
therein. Simeon said further that his torment would
cease when a pure and worthy knight should come and
extinguish the flames. This would be he by whom the
adventures of the Holy Graal should be brought at last
to their term.
It is towards the close of the story that Petrus is first
mentioned in the Book of the Holy Graal, and the reference
is at that point which corresponds rather thinly to the
institution of the Second Table. It is he who inquires
why there is a vacant seat left thereat, and who is told that
it is the place of Christ. After the assault of Simeon, the
wound of Petrus was examined and a healing by herbs
was attempted, but this did more harm than good. He
was at length left in the charge of a single priest, while
the company proceeded on their way ; but, seeing that
he expected to die, he asked to be carried to the seashore
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and to be placed in a ship which was found lying thereby,
with its sails set. The priest was not allowed to go
further, and the vessel put out presently with its solitary
occupant. He was taken to the Isle of Orkney, where
ruled the pagan King Orcaut, whose daughter witnessed
his arrival. She went on board the ship and so contrived
that Petrus was healed in the end by a Christian prisoner
who was in the hands of her father. As the issue of the
whole adventure the heathen King was converted ; Petrus
married the daughter ; he lived a long and worthy life as
the successor of Orcaut ; and he had a valiant knight for
his own heir. He died in fulness of years and was
buried at Orkney, in the church dedicated to St. Philip.
It will be seen that if the author of the Book of the
Holy Graal designed in this account to supply the missing
branch of Robert de Borron concerning Petrus, he again
—and quite manifestly — told the wrong story, for setting
aside all question of the written warrant, the true des-
tination of Petrus was not Orkney but Avalon, and there
is no correspondence otherwise.
In nearly all those incidents which, from other points
of view, are similar to some of Robert de Borron, the part
assigned by the poem to Joseph of Arimathaea is trans-
ferred to the son in that prose romance which is its
wresting rather than its extension. A notable instance
is the demand for advice by Brons concerning his twelve
boys. It is late in the story and long after the arrival of
the pilgrims in Britain that the question arises which
appears pregnant with consequence in the metrical romance.
Brons has been himself so insignificant throughout that
his name appears scarcely, though he is entitled to sit
with Joseph II., each on one side of the vacant seat at the
Second Table. As in the earlier text, eleven of the sons
expressed a desire to marry, while the twelfth elected to
lead a life of virginity. Joseph II. manifested great joy
at the choice thus made and foreshadowed the reward
which was to follow. It is indicated further by the fact
that the son, and not Brons, was directed to fish in the
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lake and obtain that slender catch which gave him thence-
forward the title of the Rich Fisher. In this case, how-
ever, it was used by a miracle to feed those whose desert
did not allow them to share in the graces and favours of
the Holy Table. When Joseph II. was dying there stood
Alain by his bedside, and, being asked why he was weeping,
he answered that it was because he was to be left like a
sheep that has lost its shepherd. He was then told that
he should be the shepherd after Joseph, having the lord-
ship of the Sacred Vessel, with power to deliver subse-
quently to another inheritor full of grace and goodness,
on condition only that the Hallow remained in the land.
We come in this manner to speak of the successions
and genealogies, and in the first place concerning the
Keepers of the Graal. Alain, by a curious disposition,
died on the same day as Alphasan, the builder of
Corbenic, and they were both buried in the church of that
city dedicated to Our Lady. The text at this point is a
little vague in expression and has been interpreted wrongly,
but the succeeding warden was evidently Joshua — that
brother of Alain who was most loved by him. He was
succeeded in due course by his son Eminadap, who
married the daughter of a King of Great Britain and had
Carceloys as issue. He in turn begot Manuiel, and from
him sprang Lambor, whose death and that which followed
I have mentioned previously. This was the first Maimed
King of the Graal, and on him followed immediately
one who was the Maimed King par excellence of suffering
and miracle of final healing — that is to say, Pellehan. But
the Book of the Holy Graal says that his wounding was in
the battle of Rome, and it knows nothing therefore of the
Dolorous Stroke inflicted by Balyn. Seeing, however,
that both texts testify that Galahad will heal, and he only,
I think it must be inferred that the two accounts refer to
the same person, who must be distinguished from King
Pelles, though there is an inclination in some criticism to
conclude otherwise, and I have shared it tentatively. The
genealogy is quite clear that King Pelles was son of
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Pellehan, and there is not any real difficulty about the
son succeeding in the life of the father, as this occurs in
the case of Joseph II. and is the rule rather than the ex-
ception in the counter-succession of the Perceval Quests.
It follows from the Book of the Holy Graal that four of the
Kings whom I have enumerated were termed Rich Fishers
in succession and that all of them reigned in Terre
Foray ne, which the Vulgate Merlin terms — or for which it
substitutes — Lytenoys.
The other genealogies are useful only in so far as they
show the descent of the persons-in-chief who appear in
the Greater Chronicles. The most important is that of
Nasciens, which leads up through many names — but they
are names only — to King Ban of Benoic, the father of
Lancelot, and hence to Lancelot himself, as well as
Galahad. The haut prince was therefore descended on the
male side from the royal line of Sarras, over which he
reigned himself after the Quest was finished ; on the
female side he was descended from Joseph of Arimathaea,
through Galahad le Fort, as the Romance of Lancelot shows.
Sir Gawain is also represented as coming from this root,
which was that of King David, but his descent was through
Petrus, the genealogy of whom is clouded rather deeply
in the text, as it is indeed in the romance of De Borron.
At the conclusion of the Book of the Holy Graal the
story professes to turn to the life of Merlin. Two of its
codices contain a long interspersed digression concerning
the two countries belonging to Mordrains and Nasciens
after they had departed therefrom. Their power and
influence were much increased under Grimaud, the son
of Mordrains. When Sarras was destroyed, with the
exception of the Spiritual Palace, it was rebuilt more
splendidly than ever. These things do not concern us,
for in dealing with the great prolix romance I think
that my summary has been confined, in accordance with
my design, to those matters which belong to the Mystery
of the Graal as it is manifested in the Greater Chronicles,
and where it has been possible to the Eucharistic side of
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'The Greater Chronicles
that Mystery as the most holy motive of all my long
research. On this subject there is one thing further to
say. The doctrine of transubstantiation, as it is presented
in the Book of the Holy Graal, and its continual transition
into the notion of physical sustenance, are things which
scandalise rather than discounsel the soul ; but as we saw
in the poem of De Borron that Eucharist and Reliquary
were alike understood spiritually, so here it will be found
in the last sifting that the spiritual side also emerges and
becomes at times prominent. When Joseph II., in obedi-
ence to the heavenly voice, departed from Sarras and its
King, that he might preach the new faith to the Gentiles,
it came about in the course of the journey that provisions
were wanting. In this extremity he knelt before the Ark,
wherein was the Holy Vessel, and implored the help of
God. Following the directions which he received, cloths
were laid on the greensward, and the people took their
places. The elder Joseph, pursuing his care of the
physical bodies, ordained that his son should take the
Graal in his hands and follow him round the cloths
while he circumambulated three times, when — this being
accomplished — all who were pure of heart would be filled
with the rare sweetness of the world. This office took
place at the hour of prime ; the father and son sat down
with a vacant place between them — as if something were
lacking which at a fitting time subsequently would make
perfect all holy ministry ; the Vessel was covered with
paten and corporal ; and the result was that those who
were privileged to take part were filled with Divine
Grace, " so that they could neither conceive nor desire
anything beyond it." That was a refection in which
material nourishment shared not at all, and though the
episode does not occur in all the codices, there is
something that corresponds to its equivalent. An in-
stance in point is found in Mordrains, the King, who,
after he has attained all earthly knowledge, and has
received as the price of attainment the orbicular wound
of Plato, is maintained through the centuries by the
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Eucharist, as Amfortas in the German cycle and the alter
ego of both in the Conte del Graal. There are other-
wise indications, and they obtain through the Greater
Chronicles, that the proximity of the Holy Graal trans-
formed the earthly festival into an experience in extasis
and the good things here below become the bona Domini
in terra viventium.
IV
SOME LATER MERLIN LEGENDS
§ A. — THE VULGATE MERLIN
There are many questions, and some of them may be
insoluble, which are concerned with or arise out of the
legend of Merlin, but there is perhaps one only which
enters at all deeply into the collateral legend of the
Graal ; it is why the British prophet, partly magician and
enchanter, but in part also God's messenger, with his
consequent strange mixture of motives, should have
been selected in the mind of romance, or in any more
withdrawn mind, as the promulgator of the Graal
Mystery in Great Britain — perhaps more correctly — as
the semi-supernatural power which was at work in con-
nection therewith ; why also it was he who brought about
the institution of the Third Symbolical Table, and set
up that Siege Perilous which was, in the first place, to
terminate the enchantments of Britain, and, in the second,
by the alternative intervention of the adventurous times,
to make void — but this is long after he has himself
passed away — the high mystery of chivalry so far as
the Round Table was concerned. The Didot Perceval
intervened in respect of the latter vocation, with results
which we have seen already, but in this respect it is
scarcely the voice of the literature.
There are those who maintain that the late prophecies
The Greater Chronicles
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries attributed to
Merlin were produced with a political object ; but the
object of the Graal was, speaking broadly, mystical, and
as regards the literature which embodies it, this is either
the reflection at a distance of secret sanctuary doctrine,
or it stands in some dubious manner for the aspirations
of the Celtic Church, and admits therefore a political
object to the extent that such aspirations responded to
particular ambitions which we know to have been
cherished by English kings at or about the period during
which the literature was developed. There are those who
look to Armorica for the original book of the legend, and
say that this was latinised by Geoffrey of Monmouth ; but
the question as to the origin of the romance elements is
too complicated for so simple a settlement, and if it had
ever a single source in writing, it was at a period when it
was apart from romance, and personally I do not question
that it was in the Latin tongue. There are those who
consider that Scotland was the home of the Arthurian
myth, but the land of second sight is not really that of
the Mysteries, and though the old Cumbrian kingdom
may have contributed to the story of Merlin, the latter
must have been enriched from other sources. It was
transported, we have been told, into Brittany, and there
it may have undergone an express transformation ; but,
in common with so much of the Arthurian cycle, it was
codified, extended and enriched by the process of late
editing in some particular, though unexplained, interest,
the method adopted by which was the collection of all the
great texts of Arthurian literature about the Holy Graal.
The hypothetical book of that legend was the central
sacred point, and all the extant texts stand about it like
subsidiary Hallows.
The break between the Early History of 'Merlin , which
ends by saying that King Arthur held his land and
kingdom long in peace, and the Vulgate Merlin, which
begins by reciting how the nobles who had acknowledged
him unwillingly went against him into prolonged re-
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
bellion, is sufficient in itself to open a new branch of the
literature. My classification, however, does not make it
impossible that the later text should reflect something
from the Lesser Chronicles, two of the texts in which
are by necessity the root-matter of all the Greater
Chronicles ; but its more important derivations are from
the Book of the Holy Graal and the appurtenances thereof,
including the prose Lancelot. We are only concerned
with the text in respect of its Graal references, and of its
content otherwise it will be sufficient, therefore, to say
that it embodies an exhaustive account of King Arthur's
wars with the Saxons, a certain group of adventures of
the less indubitably romantic kind, and thereafter the
various circumstances which led up to the internment of
Merlin. In this manner it is the close of the prophet's
chronicle, though it is still only the early history of
Arthur.
Here, as elsewhere, the re-editing of romances in the
Graal interest is to be distinguished from the innumerable
alterations made otherwise by intelligent and other tran-
scribers, but to which no ulterior motive need be attributed.
Perhaps the most signal instance of all the major editing
is the production of two, if not three, sequels, executed
independently, to the Merlin of Robert de Borron, both of
which were less or more exclusively made in the interest
which I have mentioned, while both are also ascribed
falsely to Robert de Borron. We could better under-
stand the Vulgate Merlin and the Huth Merlin could one
of them be accepted as carrying further forward the De
Borron tradition, and thus leading up to a Perceval Quest,
whether that of the Didot manuscript or another ; but
the derivatives of both texts make insuperable difficulties
in respect of this course. At the same time the process
of codification is nowhere complete in the literature. We
must assume, for example, on the basis of textual criti-
cism, that the prose Lancelot had in some form already
enriched the cycle when the Vulgate Merlin came into
existence, but in several particulars the Merlin allusions
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The Greater Chronicles
in the Lancelot do not correspond with anything in those
later Merlin stories with which we are here concerned.
These, on the other hand, when they reflect elements
which are particular to the Lancelot, may be reproducing
in summary merely, or they may offer new materials by
way of variation over details.
The Vulgate Merlin says that God has given to the
prophet that skill and discretion which' he possesses so to
assist him that he shall in fine accomplish the adventures
of the Holy Graal, which adventures are predestined to
take place in the time of King Arthur, and Blaise, the
hermit and scribe, shall live to behold the end. This is
true in respect of the Didot Perceval, but not of the other
quests, in which this personage is forgotten, or is lost, at
least, among many recording clerks. But as it follows
from the reference, by implication, that Merlin will not
himself survive, the Vulgate text cannot be said to lead
up to that document. In the interminable account of
the wars with the King Rion, there is some stress laid on
the achievements of Nasciens, who is the second of that
name, and was a young knight at the time in question.
He was a cousin of Perceval le Gallois, and was of near
kinship to Joseph of Arimathasa, as also a cousin of
Celidoine. Here the derivation is from the Book of the
Holy Graal, but the genealogy is a little distracted.
Subsequently Nasciens had Galahad in his keeping,
which statement is reflected into the Welsh Quest.
When he left chivalry, Nasciens became a hermit and
was taken by the Holy Ghost into the Third Heaven,
where he beheld unveiled the Divine Persons of the
Trinity. He had subsequently the story in his charge,
and by the ordinance of the Great Master he announced
that which he had read therein — that is to say, in the
Record of Blaise. It follows that the secret chronicle
which, according to the Book of the Holy Graal, had been
written by Christ Himself, was in reality the work of
the hermit performed under the dictation of Merlin,
and that the anonymous author of the Book of the Holy
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Graal is here identified by the device of another author,
who is himself also anonymous.
There is one reference to Helayn, the daughter of
King Pelles, of the Castle Corbenic, the niece of King
Fisher and of Alain who was wounded through both
thighs by the avenging spear. She was the fairest lady in
the land, and had the Blessed Vessel in her keeping till
the time of Galahad's conception. After what manner
Helayn was dispossessed of her high office the text
covenants to declare at a later time, but seeing that it
fails herein, it is reserved on my own part for the branch
which belongs to Galahad. We learn also concerning a
son of King Pelles, who — as in the romance of Lancelot
— is named Eleazar. At the age of fifteen years he told
his father that he would never be made a knight till the
best knight of the world should give him his arms and
the accolade after three years of service. In return for
the dignity of chivalry, he believes that he shall take the
knight to the country of King Pelles and the place of the
Graal. At this time the king's daughter, though the
bearer of the Sacred Vessel, is only seven years old. See-
ing that Galahad during his brief career of knighthood
does not confer the high degree on any squire of his
service, save only Melyas de Lyle, the son of the King
of Denmark, and much less on one who would be his
uncle according to the flesh, whom also he was destined
to meet in the Graal Castle at the term of all, we have
here the source of a legend which differs in certain respects
from any extant chronicle of the perfect knight. But it
should be understood that, in the end, Eleazar serves
Gawain and receives the accolade from him.
I do not know what construction is to be placed upon
the position of King Pelles ; to all intents and purposes
he is the Warden-in-chief of the Graal in the Quest of
Galahad, but neither there nor in the Vulgate Merlin is he
called the Rich Fisher, which is the characteristic title of
the Warden. The romance with which we are here and
now concerned tells us, this notwithstanding, that he
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is spoken of as the Rich King, which seems by way of
alternative ; he is also a full noble king and a true one.
But there is under his charge King Pellenore of the
Welsh Lands, that is to say, Pellehan, who is sick and
will never be healed till he is manifested who shall bring
to an end the adventures of the Holy Graal. This comes
to pass at the close of the times of Galahad. But there
is another brother, who is Alain of the Forayn Lands ;
he is in sickness also, and will never be cured till the
best knight of all Britain shall ask him why he is stricken
by that malady and what it is that will help him. It
follows that there is here the analogy of Perceval's
question, but it is never asked in the sequel, nor do we
hear further of Alain.
In the Vulgate Merlin the place of the Graal is Cor-
benic ; it is situated in the realm of Lytenoys, which
might signify Lyonesse ; and just as we know that the
Castle is one of perilous and even fatal adventure, so the
kingdom to which it belongs is in nowise a region of
peace, and I have said already that its ruler is a king in
warfare. The great romance contains few other refer-
ences to the Sacred Vessel and the history or the quest
thereof. The tidings of the Graal in Britain are still
tidings only ; the Quest is still not a search after the
place of the Hallows, but of knights who are proper to
undertake it. On matters of so-called early history we
hear that Joseph of Arimathaea received the blood from
the side of Christ into the Sacred Vessel when the body
was still hanging on the Cross — representing a tradition
that differs from the Lesser Chronicles, though it is
reflected from one of the visions in the Book of the Holy
Graal. We hear further that the Graal came from
heaven above into the city of Sarras, which may be a
description by inadvertence, or it may represent a reflec-
tion from some source which corresponds to the antece-
dents of Wolfram. The spear which opened the side
of Christ was brought to Logres, presumably — for it
is not stated — by him who was the first to consecrate
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and offer the Eucharist, that is to say, by the second
Joseph.
So far in fine as the Vulgate Merlin can be said to end
at all — seeing that it stops or breaks off without redeem-
ing its pledges — the close is taken soon after the enchant-
ment of Merlin by arts of his own instruction given to
the Lady of the Lake ; the record of Blaise ceases for
want of materials ; but in the meantime the clerks of the
court of King Arthur have taken up the story in a sense,
though their task is confined to the registration of the
prowess exhibited by those who are admitted newly to
the fellowship of the Round Table, and are therefore
at once postulants of earthly chivalry spiritualised and
possible seekers for the Graal.
§ B. — THE HUTH MERLIN
I speak under correction in respect of all matters which
are not in the kinship of near consanguinity with my
proper subject, but there is one thing, I think, which may
occur to many who make acquaintance with the Merlin
sub-cycle in the original texts, and this is, that despite all
the archaism of its language and the consequent diffi-
culties which it must cost to the English reader, the
method and the atmosphere of the whole seem modern
in comparison with the books of the Lesser Chronicles.
The devices and conventions suggest a later period, all
which may perhaps seem to follow from its express
attempt to codify a number of traditions and weld them
into a harmonious whole. The Huth manuscript is for
our purpose one of considerable and occasionally of great
importance. Criticism speaks of it in much the same
strain as it has spoken once or twice of the Longer Prose
Perceval, which is equivalent to saying that it misses some
vital points in a judicial appreciation of its merits on
grounds that are within measure of the literary order or
in respect of the claims put forward concerning its author-
ship. As regards the second point, there are two false
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Roberts de Borron, being him of the Vulgate and him of
the Huth Merlin, but the claim of the latter is interesting
from my standpoint perhaps for the very reason which
makes it suspected by the official critic. The inexpress
collaboration which it indicates between its unknown
author and another who is also unknown, though not
indeed unnamed — that is, Helie de Borron — is exactly
after the manner of codifications of this kind at that
period, thus providing us with a putative concordat on
the external side of the literature as an equipoise to the
mystical concordat between Merlin and Blaise. In this
manner it suggests more than it expresses, but in virtue
of their supposed understanding the Graal Mystery was
more especially in the charge of that other artist Elias
of whom the later Paracelsus had not dreamed. The date
to which the work is assigned somewhat speculatively is
between 1225 and 1230, and it is divisible for our pur-
pose into four sections: (i) the prose version of De
Borron's Joseph of Anmathaa ; (2) the constituents of
what is held to be the prose version of De Borron's
metrical romance of Merlin; (3) that later history of
Merlin which is exclusive to this manuscript ; (4) a Quest
of the Holy Graal, but this has not come down to us —
at least in the French language. We know that it was a
Quest of Galahad, and we are enabled to follow some of
its variations from the extant Galahad romance by the
allusions in the Huth Merlin, and not by these only, for
it is supposed that the Vulgate Merlin also borrowed there-
from, that it was consequently an anterior document, so
that the two later competitive Merlin codices had texts
which were identical at the beginning and a text which
was the same at the end. As regards the intermediate
portions which differ so completely, their distinction is
without prejudice to the fact that the prime inspiration
of both is the Book of the Holy Graal, and that both in a
subsidiary sense are indebted to the Lancelot.
The express purpose which has been noticed in the
Vulgate Merlin is present in the alternative text, and is
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indeed marked more strongly. It may be accepted that
the first part, as we have agreed to call it, offers no
deviation of importance from other texts of the Lesser
Holy Graal) and that it therefore reflects almost literally
the metrical romance of De Borron. It has not, how-
ever, been printed. In the second part there are also no
really important deviations, but when Blaise is engaged
by the prophet to write the history of Joseph, and there-
with to incorporate his own proposed records, it appears
that the custodians of the Graal had their independent
memorials, to which access was apparently possible, and
these also were to be embodied by the scribe. In other
words, he kept the minutes of the Mystery, and the
claim is that there was therefore a great Graal book in
the form of a general prototype. As regards the third
part, with which we are concerned henceforward in the
present section, it may be said generally that, in place of
the unending, sanguinary battles with so-called Saxon
Saracens, we are brought into the world of romance, high
enchantments and pageants marshalled gorgeously ; after
what manner this distinction appealed to those who came
after is evident from the use which was made of the text
by Malory.
We are concerned as before only with the intimate
things of the Sacred Vessel and the appurtenances thereof,
but as to the latter the undivided text might be embodied
almost in any complete schedule. Merlin moves through
the story as the ambassador rather than the messenger of
those who are the custodians of the Graal, but the adver-
tisements concerning it are still as of a Parnassus which
is remote. About the time of a certain tourney held in
Logres, a great rumour passed over the land regarding
the Sacred Vessel and its location in Britain. Where it
abode was unknown — for if Merlin spoke in season, he
told little — but the grace of its discovery and the limit
of the adventurous times were reserved for the best
knight of the world. The Companions of the Round
Table set themselves — as they do also in the Vulgate — to
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follow the Quest, and — as again they do therein — to
report concerning any Good Knight unknown heretofore
among them. If such were found, he was straightway led
to the Court, his chivalry was proved — as if a stranger
knocked for admission at a lodge of the craft degrees —
and on withstanding the tests, he was received into the
great company. Each Knight who returned from the
Quest recited his adventures, and these were reduced
into writing by four clerks retained in the service of the
Queen. In this manner they were transmitted to later
times. It was an age of secret chronicles, of their sealing
and the breaking of the seals. On the pre-viewed
approach of his doom, and before finally parting from
Blaise, Merlin indited that prophecy concerning the times
of the Quest, to which I have referred previously. It
opened as follows : " This is the beginning of the adven-
tures in the land of Britain, whereby the mighty Lion
shall be overthrown : these adventures shall be taken to
their term by a King's son, who shall be chaste, and the
best Knight of the world." After this manner did he
who instigated the Quest seem thereby to encompass
rather than foresee the destruction of the Round Table,
its king also and its chivalry. It is said further — and
still on the ground that he had not much longer to
remain in the world — that Merlin engaged King Arthur
to record all the occurrences which took place at the
royal Court, and that fifty clerks were set aside for this
office. Finally, as regards such memorials, another book
was written by the own hand of the prophet, giving
before the event an account of the death of Arthur and
of Gawain. It was in the keeping of Morgan le Fay,
but with its contents she was not acquainted, and it was
presumably therefore a cipher manuscript.
The Hidden Life of the Holy House is a prolonged
mystery of the ages through all the literature, and if one
corner of the veil is lifted for a few moments by the
Vulgate Merlin in its unconcerted allusions to King
Pelles, the Huth manuscript does not compete with
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
even this vague quality of candour, nor is there any
certain ray of light cast upon the Graal itself. It is
only the two great texts of transubstantiation in the days
of quest which claim to have drawn aside the curtains
of the Temple and to have manifested the secret things,
though they continue to say that these should be kept
covertly, and thus even in the unveiling they suggest
that there is a deeper hiding. In the Book of the Holy
Graal Corbenic is not more accessible because it is por-
trayed so openly, and it is not perhaps more withdrawn
because it is in nowise named by the Huth Merlin. This
text has allusive and hinting methods which are particular
to itself, and there is one among them which seems to
suggest a wilderness of strange meaning behind its simple
words. When Bademagus, like other of the knights to
whom no attainment was destined, was concerned for a
period in the Quest, he found a branch of an holy herb,
which was a sign of the San Greal, and no knight came
upon such token unless his life was good.
The tradition of the Third Table is carried over from
the Early History of Merlin, in which Robert de Borron
is credited with inventing, rather idly, its institution by
Uther ; but all discrepancy notwithstanding, the Huth
text, following the prose Lancelot, refers it to King Leode-
gan of Carmelide, the father of Guinevere, in which case
it would seem to be independent of the prophet and of
all logical Graal connections. The apparent discrepancy
is explained, however, by the Vulgate Merlin, which says
that the Knights of the Round Table, being weary of the
evil estate into which all the country had fallen, retired
to the realm of King Leodegan. It does not say what
appears to follow from the text of the Huth Merlin,
namely, that the material table itself is in the palace of
the King of Carmelide. The story of the Siege Perilous
is given much after the usual manner, and stress is laid
upon the fact that each Knight on rising from the table
finds his name inscribed miraculously upon the seat to
him belonging — an incident which, according to the mind
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The Greater Chronicles
of the romance, exhibits the high pleasure taken by God
in the institution of the Round Table.
Among the signs and tokens which go before, or are
conterminous with the Quest, there is the appearance of
a strange, nondescript animal, which is a combination of
many creatures, and because within her there is the noise of
hounds baying, she is called the Questing Beast. In the
Huth Merlin she appears, as if it were out of due season,
during the reign of Uther, who is told by his great coun-
sellor that she concerns one of the adventures of the Graal,
which will be explained to him by Perceval le Gallois, who
will be the son of the knight that at that time is chas-
ing the beast in question. As Perceval is therefore un-
born, and as Uther dies on his day, the prophecy does
not come to pass, but it serves to introduce Pellinore,
who is now represented as a king and again as a knight,
and he it is who follows the Questing Beast. After his
death, we know from Malory that she was long followed
by Palamedes, in both cases, to no purpose apparently,
for nothing comes therefrom. It is only in the Longer
Prose Perceval that the mystical interpretation of the
interminable pursuit is given to Perceval himself. At
this time I have said that Pellinore had not begotten
Perceval, and though on his first introduction in the days
of Arthur, his jousting seems to have constituted a kind
of guerilla warfare against the chivalry of the Court, he is
married ultimately to one of the King's sisters, and when
the Round Table is sent by Leodegan of Carmelide as his
daughter's dowry, he is chosen by Merlin to fill one of
two vacant seats which were left thereat by the prophet's
ordinance. Moreover, when other seats fall vacant, owing
to death, he assists the king to fill them, and he serves
him also in warfare. Pellinore was in fine slain by Gawain,
whose father had fallen at his hands. It will be seen that
the genealogy of Perceval, according to this romance,
makes void that of the Lesser Chronicles, as it does also
the corresponding account in the Longer Prose Perceval.
These things connect with the Holy Graal, though it
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"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
is in the subsidiary sense only, but the root and centre of
the story is the great device by which the Huth Merlin
brings war upon the House of the Hallows, devastation
on the surrounding country, and a living death upon one
of the Hereditary Wardens by means of the Dolorous
Stroke. Of this fatality I have given some account
already in a previous section, and I must speak of it
here without covering precisely the same ground. The
romance shows that the Secret Powers of Avalon were
hostile in respect of King Arthur even from the beginning.
From those realms of dream and faerie the Lady Lilith
or Lylle brought a mysterious sword to the royal court,
then being held at London. The weapon was her great
encumbrance, but she was condemned to carry it till some
knight should succeed in unsheathing it. Arthur and all
his companions made the attempt in vain, but the poor
Knight Balyn, who had just been released from prison,
fulfilled the task easily. He refused to restore the sword
to the damosel, and though he was told that it would
cause his own destruction, he agreed to take the risk.
Thereupon a Lady of the Lake entered and demanded
either the head of the knight who had won the sword or
that of the maiden who brought it. Balyn, however, cut
off her own head, saying that he had been in quest of her
these three years past, she having slain his mother by her
arts of enchantment. In this manner he saved the other
damosel, though Merlin showed that she was of evil ways
and life, never appearing for good, but for great harm
only. So begins the story of Balyn and Balan, as a tale
of dole from the first, and such it remains to the end.
But the Dolorous Stroke itself came about through a
knight who had the power to ride invisible, and thus had
others at his mercy. Balyn was in chase of this knight,
to put an end to his evil deeds, and after the episode of
the sword he overtook him in the castle of his brother,
who is the King Pellehan. There he destroyed him in
open court at a festival, and he was pursued by the king
from room to room of the building to avenge what
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T'be Greater Chronicles
appeared to be an act of wanton murder. They met in
a richly dight bedchamber, where there was a table of
gold on four pillars of silver, and on the table a marvellous
spear strangely wrought. Therewith Balyn smote his
pursuer, who fell down in a swoon. The castle roof and
walls broke and caved in. Merlin appeared and pro-
phesied that the King Pellehan would remain sorely
wounded for many years — that is to say, until Galahad
healed him in the Quest of the Holy Graal. Merlin said
also that there was preserved in the castle a part of the
Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which Joseph
of Arimathaea had brought into this land, while the
spear was that of Longinus, and the king himself was
nearly of Joseph's kindred. Balyn rode subsequently
through fair lands and cities, of which many inhabitants
were slain on all sides, while those who remained cried
out piteously against him. Such was the visitation of
the Graal — a strange and unheard of enchantment. The
story continues, multiplying dole and doom, with greater
doom foretold, till the two brethren, Balyn and Balan,
destroy one another unwittingly — truly adventurous times,
from which all might pray to be delivered.
The opening incidents of this story are found in the
Chevalier aux deux epeesy and, so far as these are concerned,
it may have drawn from some unknown source which is
common to both. On the other hand, the passing of
Merlin through the arts of Vivien or Nivienne, that Lady
of the Lake who was the foster-mother of Lancelot,
owes something to the great romance which is concerned
with his story. When of his entombment the story
ceases to speak, it promises henceforth to be concerned
with the Graal only, but in the imperfect state that we
possess the text it ceases to speak at all. As a final
word on my own part, the fact may be cited that the
Knight Pelleas is said to be one of great worship, and
one also of those four who achieved the Holy Graal. It
follows herefrom that the missing Quest of the Huth
Merlin had grave variations from that with which we are
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
acquainted, because it is not to be assumed that he was
one of the nine knights, mostly unknown, who presented
themselves, demanding and receiving admission, in the
Graal Castle at the term of the Holy Quest.
THE GREAT PROSE LANCELOT
By many ways do all the antecedent texts of the Greater
Chronicles lead up, in the hands of their editors, to the
romance of Lancelot. Therefrom, or therein, all reflect,
according to their respective measures, and itself is the
great text which goes before the romance of Galahad, as
a royal prince may herald the king of all. The prototype
of the story in respect of early Graal history is the Book
of the Holy Graal^ but some of its references have no
authority in that document. In comparison with its vast
extent, the allusions to the Sacred Vessel are rare and
brief. I will take all the necessary points in their order,
beginning with two pregnant statements, the first of which
is conclusive as to the historical source, for it is said that
the Holy Graal was that Dish in which Christ ate the
Paschal Lamb with His disciples. But the story is late
chronologically in the sequence ; it reflected much ; its
ambition was to include all Arthurian chivalry in its pro-
vince ; and none knew better than the successive authors,
who are thought to have welded it into one whole, that the
true service of the Sacred Vessel took place at no festival
of earthly meats, but at an arch-natural mass. It is haunted
therefore with the same idea as we shall find in the Longer
Prose Perceval^th&t what besides it was, the Graal was also
a chalice, and it is so described accordingly in one of the
later branches. In evidence of this it may be noted that
it is apparently the dove's censer in the story of Lancelot
which brings the good meat and drink. The second
statement occurs in a printed codex, and scholarship, which
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The Greater Chronicles
misses so little within its own province, has somehow over-
looked this : the book says, however, that the natural
Graal is to be distinguished from that which is super-
natural, and this I take to mean that on the one side
there is the festival of the Feeding Dish and on the
other the Feast mystical of Transubstantiation, at the
revelation of the whole mystery in the Quest of Galahady
foreshadowed, as a thing done out of due season, at the
ordination of Joseph II. in the old time of Sarras.
It will not be found, otherwise than as I have here
specified, that the Graal elements differ so much from
the earlier versions as the actuating sentiments regarding
the heroes of the Quest and the qualifications thereto
belonging. A certain new spirit has entered — perhaps
even a higher quality of the secret life of the Church —
and it has moderated, among other things, the final aim
regarding the Stewards of the Graal and the persons with
and for whom it is represented as sojourning on earth.
Speaking of the romance as a whole, it may be said that
it is a Wonder-Book rather than a Book of Initiation,
though at certain points it embodies very high mysteries.
According to its own description, it is a branch of the
great book of the Holy Graal, but the implied reason is
that Lancelot was the father of Galahad. Make as it
may for confusion, it is just to add here that, in this
connection, one of the unprinted manuscripts speaks of
Perceval as the leader and term of all stories told about
other knights ; it was he who achieved the Great Quest,
but his story also is a branch of the high story concerning
the Graal, which is the head and crown of all stories.
This would seem to indicate that Galahad was not the
final hero of the Quest, so far as this codex is concerned,
but it may also and more probably mean that he had his
own great place at the last consummation, or that he was an
intermediate seeker, as were Lancelot also and Gawain.
We have seen in the Huth Merlin, firstly, that it has
allusions to various occurrences in the Quest of Galahad
which are not found in the extant romance, and, secondly,
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that much of its material is derived from the Great Prose
Lancelot ; so also in this text there are references to the
succeeding branch of the Quest which we have now no
means of checking, but they are not identical throughout
with those in the Huth Merlin. It is said (a] that the
story will recur in this part to the Knight Meliadus, but
we hear nothing concerning him ; (^) that it will speak
of Helain the White, who became Emperor of Constan-
tinople, but this it does not do ; (^) that many marvels
concerning the Tower of Merlin will be recounted therein,
but we hear nothing ; (<^) that Orpheus, a certain en-
chanter, is doomed to remain in the Castle of the Holy
Graal, with two snakes about his neck, until the Quest
has been achieved, but he is forgotten entirely therein.
These items may be contrasted with those which have
been specified in respect of the Vulgate and the Huth
Merlin; if there are others, as a more exhaustive
analysis would find, and this assuredly, I believe that my
purpose has been served within the measure of reason,
and I will turn therefore to some further Graal references
found in the Lancelot, and of which we hear otherwise.
There are several intimations concerning the close of
the adventurous times in Great Britain, and the occu-
pation of the Siege Perilous at the Round Table ; the
commencement of these times was on the occasion of the
war declared by Uther Pendragon against King Urien.
There is also a certain knight, named Elias, who carried
two swords, after the manner of Balyn ; one of them
was enclosed in a priceless scabbard, and is said to be
that in the old days which pierced the loins of Joseph of
Arimathaea and was broken therein, as narrated in the
Book of the Holy Graal. It was destined not to be re-
soldered except by the Lord of Chivalry, who was to put
an end to the adventurous times, with all the wonders
and mysteries of the Holy Vessel.
A few other points will be best taken with the
personal history of Lancelot, though it is not within my
province to provide a formal analysis of the romance
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The Greater Chronicles
itself. Lancelot was the son of King Ban of Benoic,
and his mother Helen was of the race of Joseph of Ari-
mathaea, through whom she was of the line of King David.
It is therefore said that, through his mother, Lancelot
had the same blood in his veins as the King of Heaven
Himself had deigned to take.
His baptismal name was Galahad, and, according to
the Huth Merlin, Lancelot was that which he received
in confirmation, though I find no record concerning
this sacrament in his own romance. He was carried
away in his infancy by one of the Ladies of the Lake ;
she is really that Vivien who deceived Merlin, and who,
under a cloud of poetic modernism, is familiar to the
readers of Tennyson. The part which she plays through
all the tale of chivalry is out of true kinship with what
we have been disposed to conceive as she is pictured in the
laureate's glass of vision. By the knowledge which she
derived from Merlin she entered that unincorporated
hierarchy of fairyland of which we hear in the books of
chivalry ; she became a fay-lady, which signifies not an
extra-human being of some minor or elemental order,
but a woman proficient in magic. It should be noted
here that whereas, in the ordinary acceptation, a fairy
may correspond either to male or female, the term
is never used in the Arthurian books except with
reference to a woman. For example, the Fountain of
Fairies, which is mentioned Once in the Lancelot, received
that name because beautiful unknown ladies had been seen
thereat. The Lake into which the child was carried was
therefore a Lake of Magic, concealing from public view
the palace or manor in which his guardian dwelt, and
the great park-land about it. The account of the region
within this water of enchantment recalls one of the
romantic episodes in the Le Roman de Jaufre, and, speaking
generally, there are distinct analogies between this com-
paratively unknown Provencal poem and other tales of the
Round Table.
Lancelot remained in the charge of the Lady of the
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Lake until he was eighteen. About this period she
told him the story of his ancestor Joseph, and also of
Joseph's son, the first Galahad, who became the King of
that country which was afterwards called Wales. She
referred to King Pelles of Lytenoys and his brother,
a second and later Alain le Gros, who had never ceased
to maintain themselves in high honour and glory before
the world and in the sight of God. As regards his own
future course, she told him that he was called to carry to
their term many wonderful adventures, while those which
he did not achieve would remain over for a knight who
was yet unborn, that is to say, for the last and true
Galahad. But of the Graal she did not tell him, though
at a later time he heard of the tomb of Lucan, connected
with a house of religion, wherein was buried the godson
of Joseph of Arimathaea, who was once charged with the
guardianship of the Sacred Vessel. The Huth Merlin
says, however, that it was a granddaughter of the
First Keeper, which seems to accord better with the
general tradition.
Before parting with Lancelot, the Lady of the Lake
gave him a wand or ring — for the codices differ — which
had the power of dissolving enchantments, presumably
other than her own, and it served him in good stead at
many junctures. Thus equipped, he went forth into the
world, followed by her secret providence, and repaired to
the Court of King Arthur, where, in due time, he was
entered as a Companion of the Round Table, a recep-
tion which was characterised by considerable ceremonial
grandeur. So passed he into the world of chivalry,
but through the glory of his after-life, and through the
scandal of his unhappy, over-measured, too faithful
love, we have no call to follow him. Before we come —
in another section — to the great event of his history,
outside these particular vocations, there are only three
further points to be noted. On one occasion he has a
vision of his ancestors, namely, Nascien, Celidoine, the
second Nascien, Alain le Gros and Jonas, who begot the
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first Lancelot, who was himself father to King Ban of
Benoic ; but it will be observed that this is on the male
side, and is therefore without prejudice to his derivation
on the mother's side from the radix Jesse. On another
occasion Lancelot visited the tomb of the first Galahad,
King of Wales. He saw also the burning sepulchre of
Simeon, and spoke with that victim of the centuries,
who told him that the knight who should deliver him
would be of his own kindred, and as nearly as possible
the very flesh of Lancelot. It is said in explanation
that Simeon was the father of Moses and the nephew of
Joseph, all which is in opposition to Robert de Borron,
though it reproduces literally the Book of the Holy Graal.
Moses was tormented in a similar tomb, but owing to
the prayers of Lancelot both experienced a certain miti-
gation, and their delivery in thirty years was insured
further. Lancelot removed the body of the first Galahad,
which was transported to Wales and reinterred with great
honour. The third point concerns the visit of Gawain
and Hector to a graveyard which they are counselled not
to enter unless one of them is the recreant knight whose
evil living has caused him to forfeit the honour of achiev-
ing the adventures of the Graal. The reference is to
Lancelot, and the graveyard is said to contain Simeon,
Canaan and the twelve brothers whom they immolated.
But this does not seem to correspond with the previous
account of Simeon's tomb. It is conclusive, however, as
to the disqualification of Lancelot for the Great Quest.
Had he never loved the Queen, he would not have be-
gotten Galahad, for whom no office would have remained,
seeing that he himself was the exotic flower of chivalry,
palm of faith and cedar of purity. But, as things were,
the great light of Lancelot was clouded deeply, nor ever
shone freely until that term of all when he was received
into the priestly sanctuary of the official church and was
clothed at last in incense. It is certain that, speaking
generally of the Greater Chronicles, there was no true
light of Gawain, though some of the romances issued
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
from the ministry of Nature have pictured him in
glowing colours. Subject to one great and cryptic
exception, the day of Chretien and Gautier had given
way to the day of the prose Lancelot, and Gawain had
been stripped of nearly all his graces, a process first
begun in the Romance of Tristram. Perhaps it may be
said that although he saw something according to the
Conte del Graal^ therein is an episode of personation, on
which I have dwelt shortly, though it was not consciously
to the hero himself. In Heinrich's poem he enters only
into a world of ghosts. In the prose Lancelot he is
characterised by a constitutional incapacity, to which the
Galahad Quest adds impenitence in evil-doing. The
picture of Sir Bors is one of great beauty, but it does not
carry with it any particular significance, except that of a
witness on his way back into the world. Among the
Graal heroes we are therefore reduced, as we have seen
and shall otherwise see further, to Perceval and Galahad.
Of these two there is little doubt that Perceval was the
first in time, or that in a certain sense Galahad was an
afterthought. I use the expression so that I may in-
troduce the more probable theory that this elect knight
represents a later but exceedingly express intention, as if
it were the design of the legend to say that a day would
come when that Arthurian sacrament of which I have
spoken previously, would not only be communicated at
last to the world without, but that the official church would
receive also, on its knees, acknowledging that there are
great consecrations. If, without seeming too fantastic, I
may refer to an old symbol which has no special con-
nection with the present order of ideas, Galahad is like
the horn of the quintessence in the microcosmic and
alchemical star, and the four other horns are the four
aspects of the symbolical legend of Perceval, being (#)
the Didot Perceval ; (b) the Conte del Graal ; (c] the Longer
Prose Perceval; and (d) the Parsifal of Wolfram. It
does no real outrage to the order of time if I say that
these aspects represent, symbolically speaking, the growth
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The Greater Chronicles
of the tradition. The Didot Perceval may be doubtless
later than Chretien, and from him may have borrowed
something, but the two texts are near enough in time to
make the question of priority, at least to an extent, unim-
portant. Let me endeavour to compare for a moment
the intention of this strange pentagram in literature.
Collectively or individually its documents are best taken
in connection one with another, and in conjunction also
with those which lead up to them. It is only the Longer
Prose Perceval which stands to some extent alone in the
Northern French cycle, though it has certain connections
with the Book of the Holy Graal. In the German cycle
the Parsifal is by no means without antecedents, for we
can trace the hand of Guiot up to a certain point, and
we can trace also the analogies with Chretien, though
Wolfram scouted his version. Finally, we have the
Galahad legend, as if the closing were taken in a super-
lative grade of romance.
As in the Conte del Graal, so in the romance of Lance-
lot, there is one visit paid by Gawain to the Graal Castle,
and it begins abruptly with an adventure at a pavilion by
a certain fountain. Gawain, who is the actor-in-chief,
reached a castle subsequently in some annex or quarter of
which he found a maiden in the durance of a scalding
bath, wherefrom no one could save her except the highest
typical example of earthly knighthood. Gawain was not
Lancelot — for whom the adventure was reserved — and
he failed therefore, for which he was promised shame
to ensue quickly. He was received with pomp in the
castle, and came into the presence of the king, by whom
he was welcomed after the true manner of chivalry. In
a word, he was at Corbenic, the Graal Castle, and the
herald of the secret ministry entered in the shape of a
dove, bearing a censer in its beak. This vision was
momentary only, and was not repeated, but it served as
a sign for the company to take their seats at the tables,
and this was followed by the entrance of a maiden —
that daughter, fairest among women — who carried the
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chalice of the Graal, in her passage through the hall
replenishing the dishes and filling the place with sweet
odours. After what manner this multiplication of loaves
and fishes takes place does not appear — a feature which
characterises nearly all the coincident legends of this
particular type. It is worth a passing note that it is
perhaps the only instance in which the Graal bearer is
unaccompanied entirely. So much was Gawain bespelled
by the maiden's beauty that he had no eyes for anything
else. She departed at length, and he, coming to himself,
found that, for some fault which he could not identify,
he only was left without refection of any kind — even as
the evil livers in the company of Joseph. The meal pro-
ceeded in complete silence, and was disconsolate enough
for the hero, who already began to feel the working of
that shame which was promised him. At the end of
the supper the whole company departed, still without
any word, and a dwarf — who tried to chastise him, because
of his presence in that part of the building — bade him at
length go in search of some other chamber, where no
one would see him. He remained, however, in the hall,
and there had a certain partial vision of a Graal service.
The presence of the Sacred Vessel healed him not only of
a grievous wound which he had received from a spear a
little earlier in the narrative, but also of various hurts in
a long combat with an unknown knight in the hall. I
omit any special account of this meeting, except that here
again Gawain was attacked because he refused to depart.
I omit also a clumsy parable concerning a dragon who
gave birth to a vast progeny and afterwards strove with
a leopard, only to be destroyed in the end by her own
children, who likewise perished in the struggle. In a
state of exhaustion Gawain at length fell asleep, and
found on waking in the morning that he was being
drawn through the public streets of the city in a vile
cart. After being pelted with filth, he was released
ultimately, and arrived at the hold of one whom men
termed the Secret Hermit. From him he ascertained
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that he had been at the Graal Castle, which appears
to be new tidings ; of the Sacred Vessel and its mys-
teries he learned nothing, though it was foretold that
he should know soon, but this does not seem to come
to pass.
Of such is the message of the literature as it moved
towards the greater heights of its root-conception. It
should be added that whereas in the prose Lancelot
Gawain is thus covered with disdain, the romance of
Galahad paints him in darker colours. But between the
one and the other I propose to introduce a different picture
in the Longer Prose Perceval. Meanwhile, I do not know
why there was such a revulsion of feeling in respect of
one who in certain texts appears as the knight of earthly
courtesy, and who assuredly in the Conte del Graal is not
less entitled to consideration than Perceval himself.
After another manner is it dealt to another knight,
who visited the castle also, but he was the diadem of
chivalry which at that time had been exalted in the world
of Logres. By this I mean that he was Lancelot, and he
arrived not only as an expected guest, but as one whose
advent had been decreed and led up to from the first
times of the mystery. It was then that the great parable
of the adventurous times passed into that other parable
concerning the times of enchantment, because it was under-
stood before everything, and was also accepted, that the
faith of King Ban's son was with the heart of the Queen
forever, and so utterly that, in the sub-surface mind of
romance, it had even moved somewhere as if towards the
sacramental order ; or without being condoned therein
it was believed to have carried within it an element of
redemption. Dedicated and vowed as he was, no other
willing union was possible ; hence therefore the office of
enchantment to bring about the conception of Galahad
by the daughter of the House of the Graal, with Lancelot
as the morganatic father, thus ensuring the genealogical
legitimacy of the last recipient of the mysteries.
Of this conception I propose to speak in another
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section, because the Lancelot dissolves into the Quest, of
which the first condition is the birth of Galahad.
VI
A PREFACE OR INTRODUCTORT PORTION
APPERTAINING TO ALL THE QUESTS
There is a certain sense in which we can say that the
knight of old was consecrated like the priest of old, and
we can picture the whole ceremony as if it were included
in some unwritten part of the Pontificate Romanum. The
institution of chivalry existed for a particular impression
of ecclesiastical idealism on one domain of the life in the
world. It was as if it were the outcome of some unde-
clared design to dedicate even warfare to the high ends
of the Church, as if the implied covenant of battle were
that a man should be so prepared through all his days
that no sudden and violent death should find him unfitted
for his transit. The causes of strife are many, and some
of them are doubtful enough, but so clothed in the
armour of salvation the natural-born hero experienced
a kind of rebirth and came forth, so far as he himself
was concerned, a soldier of the cross. One section at
least in the romantic literature of chivalry was devoted
to this ideal, and better than any formal catechism of
doctrine and conduct did it uphold the authority of the
Church and illustrate the principles of its practice. That
section was the quest of the Holy Graal in its proper
understanding, and on the authority of this fact I can
say that this branch became a search after high sanctity
expressed in the form of romance ; as such it does not
differ from the quest-in-chief of holiness. It has been
rendered after more than one manner out of the con-
secrated implicits imbedded in consciousness, as if this
were the rare and secret book from which the texts,
almost indifferently, claim to have derived their knowledge,
and it happens — for our greater misdirection — that some
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of the modes of transcript are like F rater Pereclinus de
Faustis in the old mystery of salvation — that is to say,
they are far from the goal.
These statements — which are introduced like an inter-
lude in a section apart and as if extrajudical — will sound
strangely in the ears of those who have preceded me, and
it must be understood that, of course, I am speaking of
things as they are found at their highest in the great
texts ; but the evidence is there ; it- is there also in terms
that it is impossible to elude and impossible also to
discount. In respect of the Conte del Graal, we must
surrender to Nature the things which are Nature's ; but
the Longer Prose Perceval says that of God moveth its
High History, and I say likewise — but in a more exalted
degree still — concerning the Quest of Galahad. Were it
otherwise, the literature of the Graal would be like the
records of any other princes of this world, and my pre-
dilections would have nothing therein. My true intent
from the beginning of my life in letters has been for the
delight of the soul in God, and I have not consented
with my heart to the making of books for another and
lesser end.
It was only by slow stages that the course of the
literature rose up to that height at which it found rather
than created the ideal of Galahad. We may take as our
most obvious illustration of the developing process one
crucial point which characterises the Perceval quests, and
this is the loves of the hero. The earlier branches of the
Conte del Graal show little conscience on the subject of
restraint, the deportment of the hero being simply a
question of opportunity. I know that we are dealing
with a period when the natural passions were condoned
rather easily, though the Church had intervened to con-
secrate the rite of marriage after an especial manner.
Hence it was little stigma for a hero of chivalry to be
born out of lawful wedlock, or to beget sons of desire
who would shine in his light and their own subsequently.
The ideal of virginity remained, all this notwith-
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standing, so that the makers of romance knew well
enough where the instituted counsels of perfection lay.
It is comparatively late in the cycles that ascetic purity
became an indefectible title to success in the Quest of the
Holy Graal, about which time Gawain and Lancelot
were relegated to their proper places — ridicule and con-
fusion, in the one case, and final, though not irreverent,
disqualification in the other.
The Didot Perceval offers a frigid quality of abstin-
ence, apart from either sympathy or enlightenment, and
without one touch of grace to make it kindred with the
ardours and solitudes of the Divine Life. The poem
of Gerbert preserves the hero's virginity even on his
marriage night, but the precaution — considering the texts
which he had elected to follow — has the aspect of a leap
in the dark. Wolfram insures the chastity of Perceval
by introducing the marriage of his questing knight at an
early stage. The Longer Prose Perceval is like heaven,
knowing neither marriage nor giving in marriage, or at
least nuptials are so utterly made in heaven that they
are not reflected on earth. Blanchefleur has disappeared
entirely, and it is never supposed that the Quest would
be achieved in perfection by one who was not a virgin.
If we turn now to the story of Galahad, we shall find
that the Quest of the Holy Graal has become an un-
earthly experiment. There is illumination, there is
sanctity, there is ecstasy, and the greatest of these is
ecstasy, because it is the term of the others. All the
high researches end in a rapture, and thereby is that
change of location which does not mean passage through
space. I believe that the author of the Great Quest
knew what he was doing when — leaving nothing outside—
he so transmuted all, and assuredly in the order of
romance he spoke as no man had spoken before him.
Now, seeing that all subjects bring us back to the one
subject ; that in spite, for example, of any scandalous
histories, every official congregation returns us to the
one official Church ; so, at whatever point we may begin,
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The Greater Chronicles
I affirm that every quest takes us ultimately to that of
Galahad. It would seem, therefore, that this is the
crown of all. If Galahad had come in the good time
instead of in the evil, the Graal would have been set up
for adoration before the whole face of Logres. But the
Quest says that the world was not worthy, though the
Parsifal seems to say : " Behold, I am with you always."
Of Perceval and his great experiment there are several
phases ; but this is the lesser Quest. Of Galahad there
is one phase only, led up to by many romances, but re-
presented in fine by a single transcendent text. This text
is the quintessence and transmutation of everything,
allocating all seekers — Perceval, Bors, Lancelot, Gawain
— to their proper spheres, over whom shines Galahad as
an exalted horn in the great pentagram of chivalry. Of
the Perceval Quest there are two great versions ; one of
them, as I have already noted, is an alternative conclusion
to the cycle of the Greater Chronicles ; and one — which
is the German Parsifal — all antecedents notwithstanding,
is something set apart by itself in a peculiar house of
mystery. It is the story of the natural man taken
gradually to the heights. There is also a third quest, that
of the Didot Perceval, which, amidst many insufficiences,
is important for several reasons after its own manner—
that is to say, because of its genealogy. The fourth is
the Conte del Graal, and this — apart from Gerbert — is of
no importance symbolically, though it is a great and
powerful talisman of archaic poetry. The truth is that
for all the high things there are many substitutes, after
the manner of colourable pretences, and many transcripts,
as out of the language of the angels into that of man,
after the same way that the great external churches have
expressed the mysteries of doctrine in words of one syl-
lable for children who are learning to read. But the ab-
solute and direct message of the things most high, coming
in the name of these, is alone commonly. In fine, it
sometimes happens that as from any corner of the veil
the prepared eyes can look through and perceive some-
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thing of the immeasurable region which lies beyond
the common faculties of sense, so there are mysteries of
books which are in no way sufficient in themselves, but
they contain the elements and portents concerning all
those great things of which it is given the heart to con-
ceive. Among these are the Graal books in the forms
which present the legend at its highest.
VII
THE LONGER PROSE PERCEVAL
Amidst much that is dubious and belonging to the
seeming of enchantment, one thing is certain — that the
Perceval Quests leave behind them the Graal Castle and
that nothing is taken absolutely away, for even the Conte
del Graal presents the removal of the Hallows as a point
of speculation rather than a thing of certitude. So much
is true also of the only Perceval romance in the Northern
French cycle which leans towards greatness. I have given
it a name which is descriptive rather than its exact title,
for, like the Conte, it is Perceval le Gallois, the Perlesvaux
for modern scholarship, while for him who in recent
years recreated rather than rendered it, the proper desig-
nation is The High History of the Holy Graal. By its own
hypothesis, it is based upon and was drawn into romance
out of a Latin book, said to have been written by Josephus,
which scribe is meant possibly to be Joseph II. of the
Book of the Holy Graal — that first priest who sacrificed
the Body of our Lord. So, therefore, as the Lesser
Chronicles derive from a Secret Book allocated to the
first Joseph, does this reflection of the legends which are
called greater draw from the records of his son. But the
one is not rendered into the other, for the other derives
from the one many points of reference which it does not
set forth actually.
The Longer Prose Perceval is an echo of many texts,
including the Conte del Graal, and of things unknown
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which suggest Guiot de Provence, or the group which
is covered by his name. It would seem also that the
author, though there was much that he remembered,
had either forgotten not a few episodes of the antecedent
legends, or alternatively he scouted some things and was
bent on inventing more. We have seen that, according
to Gautier, the failure of Perceval to ask the vital ques-
tion involved the destruction of kingdoms, but the Longer
Prose Perceval is the one story in the whole cycle which,
firstly, accounts for the king's languishment, by this
failure, as the sole actuating cause, and, secondly,
represents King Fisherman as dying in the middle way
of the narrative, unconsoled and unhealed, before the
word of power is spoken. Further, it is the only story
which describes the Secret Sanctuary as the Castle of
Souls, or which specifies an evil brother of King Fisher-
man under the title of the King of Castle Mortal,
though this character has analogies with the Klingsor
of Wolfram.
There is little need to speak of the story itself, which
is available to every one in the best of all possible versions,
but it should be understood that its entire action is sub-
sequent to the first visit paid by Perceval to the Graal
Castle and the consequent suppression of the Word. In
the course of the story such suppressions are several.
For example, when the dismembered pageant of the Graal
is going about in the land, a certain Damosel of the Car
wanders from place to place, carrying her arm slung at
her neck in a golden stole, and lying on a rich pillow.
Sir Gawain, who meets and converses w h her, fails to
inquire the reason, and is told that no greater care will
be his at the court of the Rich King Fisherman. That
reason is, however, explained to him subsequently, namely,
that she was the bearer of the Sacred Vessel on the occa-
sion of Perceval's visit, and nothing else wi]] she carry till
she returns to the Holy House. It will be seen that the
romance has strange vicarious penances besides its strange
quests. It does not appear why the Damosel of the Car
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is constrained to wander on account of Perceval's
silence. But we are moving throughout the narrative in
a high region of similitude, and although it is concerned
so chiefly with the perpetuation of a mystery which is so
divine, it creates no secret from the beginning as to the
nature and origin of that mystery, nor does it fail to
make plain the fact of the mystical significance which
underlies many of its episodes and adventures. Some-
times its dealings in allegory are drawn from materials
belonging to another side of the Graal legend, as in one
reference to King Pelles, who for the great love of his
Saviour had renounced his kingdom and entered into a
hermitage. It is said that his son Joseus slew his own
mother at a certain castle, which from that time forward
continued burning, burning, and it is testified that from
this hold and from one other there will be enkindled
the strong flame which in fine shall consume the world.
Again, there are many intimations concerning the
Earthly Paradise, which lay behind the Castle of the Graal,
showing that this House was really a place of initiation—
the gate of something that was beyond it. According to
Josephus, the soul of any person who passed through the
Castle went to Paradise, from which those who are quali-
fied may infer what grades of initiation were conferred
within its penetralia. The true spiritual place was there-
fore not at Sarras — which in this story has gone utterly
out of being — but at the Graal Castle, though before the
Earthly Paradise becomes the Home of Souls it must
be assumed into the higher Garden of Eden. There is
another facet of this jewel of meaning which says else-
where that the Red Cross symbolises the redeeming blood,
meaning that it is the tincture of the Divine Virtue by
which the tree of the universal disaster becomes the Tree
of Life. There are further allusions designed — as one
would imagine — to exhibit the proximity of this world
to the next, and it happens sometimes that one side of
the world beyond thus realised is not of a desirable kind.
Perceval visits a certain Castle of Copper, which is a
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stronghold of evil faith and an abode of perverse spirits.
Beside it there rages a water called the River of Hell,
which plunges and ploughs into the sea with a fell hiss-
ing, so that it is a place of danger to those who sail by
the stars.
The story has many questers, and he who attains to
the Keepership is not he who can be said to enter the
Mysteries at a saving time. As King Arthur is accused
at the beginning of falling into a supine state, ceasing
from deeds of chivalry and scattering the flock of his
knighthood, so a certain poetical justice is done to him
by the assignment of an important place of vision in the
finding of the Graal. As regards the questers generally,
prior to the death of King Fisherman, the latter received
a visit from Gawain, who, in accordance with the prophecy
uttered by the Damosel of the Car, failed in his turn to
ask the vital question, though scarcely — as the romance
confesses — through his own fault, for at the sight of the
Graal and the Lance he fell into an ecstasy, and, for the
first and only time recorded of him in all the literature,
the thought of God overflowed his whole consciousness.
Lancelot also visited the Castle prior to the King's death,
but there was no manifestation of the Sacred Vessel on
this occasion, because of that which had been and was
between him and Arthur's royal consort, the reason
apparently being less on account of the past than of his
long impenitence in the heart. By the evidence of several
texts Gawain also had led an evil life, but at least for the
purposes of the Quest he had here put it from him in
confession. It is just to add that the exalted legend of
Galahad is not so severe upon Lancelot, permitting him
to see all save the inmost heart of the mystery. For such
a measure of success as inhered in his presence and vision
at the Graal Castle, Gawain was indebted to the prowess
by which, as a preliminary condition, he was enabled to
wrest from an unlawful custodian the Sword of St. John
the Baptist. Speaking generally, he was the favoured
recipient of many episodical mysteries in this romance, to
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each one of which a suitable interpretation is allocated ;
in one case his adventures proved to be an excursion into
the mystical domain of the Fall of Adam and that of the
scheme of Redemption ; in another he beheld three
maidens grouped about a fountain who dissolved ulti-
mately into a single maiden, as though they were
another symbol of the Holy Trinity and the superinces-
sion of the three Divine Persons. If, this notwithstand-
ing, he was allotted no better success than Perceval on
his first visit, he learned much, and more indeed than
he was qualified to understand fully.
The High Quest is dolorous enough in its conse-
quences even to worthy heroes and others illustrious who
undertake it without indubitable election. The realm of
Arthur was left sufficiently discounselled when he set
forth on that great errand ; he suffered even the death of
his Queen, in defiance of the whole tradition of the cycle.
He is a pathetic and haunting figure moving through the
pageant of that one romance which has enrolled him
among the Knights of Quest, and though he saw the
Graal in its processional travels when it was uplifted like
a monstrance over the world of Logres, he did not reach
the Castle till after the second entry of Perceval, as
another king in warfare, had been ratified by the return
of the Hallows. Then he was welcomed by Perceval and
was led into the presence of the Graal, or at least into the
chapel where it abode and was accustomed to appear at
the serving of the Mass. It is at this point that the
mystery of the subject deepens and that he is said to
have beheld the five changes, corresponding to the five
wounds which Christ received upon the Cross. But the
vision had a more withdrawn meaning, which is held in
utter reserve, because it is the secret of the sacrament. It
was through his experiences in the Hidden House that
Arthur, on his return to Cardoil, was enabled to furnish,
as we are told, the true pattern for Eucharistic chalices,
previously unknown in his kingdom, and, in like manner,
of bells for church offices.
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It is possible scarcely to say that the numerous allusions
to the Sacred Vessel tend to the increase of our know-
ledge on the descriptive side of the object, but on that
which may be called historical there is ample evidence
that the story draws from some form of The Book of the
Holy Graal, while its specific additions and extensions do
not distract its harmony in respect of this source. It is
clear from several statements that there is to be no rest
in the land until the Graal has been achieved, but the
tremor of adventure and enchantment which stirs Logres
in its dream is not characterised clearly by either of
those diagnoses which are found in the Greater or Lesser
Chronicles. Prior to the first arrival of Perceval, and
during his keepership subsequently, those maidens and
holy hermits who, in one or another way, have been
concerned with the Graal service have a devotional
refuge therein which carries with it a species of youth
renewal. Yet the vessel itself still lies under a certain
cloud of mystery, and during the period of research there
is no man, however well he may be acquainted himself
therewith, who can instruct another in the quest or in
the attainment of the Castle of Desire. The will of God
alone can lead the seeker.
Though encompassed by sacramental protections, the
Graal and its companion Hallows were not without
danger from the assaults of workers of evil. We learn
early in the story that King Fisherman is challenged
by the King of Castle Mortal in respect of the Graal
and Lance. The fact of this claim and the partial
success which follows it constitutes a departure from
the tradition of the whole French cycle, in so far as
it is now extant ; but we shall meet with its corre-
spondences in the German cycle, and shall find that, as
they do not derive from one another, they are branches
with a common root which lies beneath the surface of
the literature. The King of Castle Mortal is described
as he who sold God for money ; but although there is a
full account of the evil ruler taking possession of the
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Graal Castle, we know nothing of his antecedent life,
except that he was a brother of him who was sealed with
sanctity and the rightful custodian therefore of the
sacred objects. It follows from this that he was reared,
so to speak, in the sanctuary and must have either be-
trayed the sanctuary or have been cast out therefrom.
The usurpation takes place after the death of King
Fisherman, which seems to have created the opportunity ;
but when the enemy of the Laws of Light entered into
the place of God, the Chapel of the Holy Graal was
emptied of its Hallows, which were taken into deeper
retreat. The sanctuary was not destined, however, to
remain under the powers of the darkness, and as in the
other romances Perceval returns in fine to ask the
postponed question ; as by so doing he restores health
to the King and joy to the Hidden House ; so here
he visits the usurper with arms of the body, arms of
the soul in purity, invincible arms of grace, and by
his conquest of the Castle he reads himself into the
Kingdom, while the self-destruction of the false King
follows on that victory. The Hallows are then restored,
though the witness does not say whether by hands of
men, hands of angels, or borne by the wind of the Spirit.
The sepulchre of King Fisherman was before the altar,
and it was covered with the jewelled tabernacle, which
seems to have been moved by a miracle.
Perceval abode in the Castle, except in so far as his
toilsome life called him temporarily away, and there
also were his mother — who did not die at the beginning
of his adventures, as in several of the other texts — and
his virgin sister, till they were called at length from
earth. The call came also to Perceval, but not in the
guise of death. He was instructed, as we have seen in
another branch of our inquest, to divide the Hallows
between certain hermits who possessed the " building
word" for churches of all things holy and houses dedicated
to sanctity. From this it follows that the Graal in this
story may not in reality depart, but is removed and
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The Greater Chronicles
remains — as it would seem — in some undeclared sanctuary
of Britain. Perceval was not instructed, and made no
disposition in respect of his kingdom or the Castle, for
there began the ringing of certain joyful bells, as if for a
bridal. Into the harbour there entered a ship with white
sails emblazoned with the Red Cross, and therein was a
fair, priestly company, robed for the celebration of Mass.
The anchor was cast, and the company went to pray in
the Chapel of the Holy Graal, bearing with them glorious
vessels of gold and silver, as if on the removal of those
things which were without price in the order of the
spirit there were left, as a sign of goodwill, the external
offerings of precious metals of this world. Perceval
took leave of his household and entered the ship,
followed by those whose high presence made his de-
parture a pageant. It is said, thereupon, that the Graal
would appear no more in the Chapel or Castle, but
that Perceval would know well the place where it
would be.
There can be no question that in spite of several
discrepancies this version of the Quest is the most signi-
ficant of all its renderings into the fair language of
romance, that being excepted only which is the exalted
Quest of all. I record in conclusion as follows :
(i) That there is no genealogy given of the Graal
Keeper ; (2) that among the discrepancies, or as some-
thing that is out of reason, there must be included the
allocation of the King's illness to the paralysed inqui-
sition of Perceval ; (3) that so far as enchantments
of Britain are mentioned in this text, the Longer Prose
Perceval draws a certain reflection from the Lesser
Chronicles ; (4) that the final abrogation of the question
through the King's death in misease, and the winning
of the Graal by the chance of war, are things which
place this branch of the Graal literature apart from all
other branches; (5) accepting the judgment of scholar-
ship that the Mabinogi of Peredur and the English Syr
Percyvelle are the last reflections of some primeval non-
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Christian quest, before all marriage with the Graal, it
is desirable to note that the Longer Prose Perceval shares
with them one characteristic in common, that in none of
them is the question asked ; and late though it be other-
wise, as those texts are late, this also seems to embody a
primitive element. I should mention further that the
shield borne by Perceval is said to have been the shield
of that Joseph who " took down the Saviour of the world
from hanging on the rood," and that Joseph set in the
boss thereof a relic of the Precious Blood and a piece of
our Lord's garment. It seems obvious that this is a re-
flection from the Book of the Holy Graal concerning the
shield of Evalach, but this was reserved for Galahad.
And in fine, as regards the question, with all that followed
in respect of the King's languishment, it should be noted
— as a suggestion of deeper mystery behind one unac-
countable mystery — that, on the evidence of King Fisher
himself, he would have been whole of his limbs and his
body, had he known that the visitor at the Graal Castle
was Perceval, and his own nephew.
VIII
THE QUEST OF THE HIGH PRINCE
Having passed through many initiations, I can say with
the sincerity which comes of full knowledge that the
Graal legend, ritually and ceremonially presented, is the
greatest of all which lies beyond the known borders of
the instituted mysteries. But it is exalted in a place of
understanding of which no one can speak in public, not
only because of certain seals placed upon the sanctuary,
but more especially, in the last resource, because there
are no listeners. I know, however, and can say that the
Cup appears ; I know that it is the Graal cup ; and the
wonders of its manifestation in romance are not so far
removed from the high things which it symbolises,
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whence it follows that the same story is told everywhere.
It is in this way that on these subjects we may make up
our minds to say new things, but we say only those which
are old, because it would seem that there are no others.
If Guiot de Provence ever affirmed that the Graal legend
was first written in the starry heavens, he testified to that
which is the shadow of the truth, or more properly its
bright reflection.
Let us now set before our minds the image of the
Graal Castle, having a local habitation and a name on
the mountain-side of Corbenic. The inhabitant-in-chief
of this sanctuary is the Keeper of the Hallows, holding
by lineal descent from the first times of the mystery.
This is the noble King Pelles, behind whom is that un-
declared type of the consecrated royalty which was — the
maimed King Pellehan, whose hurt has to be healed by
Galahad. The maiden who carries the Sacred Vessel in
the pageant of the ceremonial rite is the reigning king's
daughter, the virgo intacta Helayne. To the Castle on a
certain occasion there comes the Knight Lancelot, who is
the son of King Ban of Benoic, while his mother Helen is
issued from the race of Joseph of Arimathaea, and through
him is of the line of King David. It is known by the
Keeper Pelles that to bring to its final term the mystery of
the Holy Graal, his daughter must bear a child to Lancelot,
and this is accomplished under circumstances of enchant-
ment which seem to have eliminated from the maiden all
sense of earthly passion. It cannot be said that this was
the state of Lancelot, who believed that his partner in
the mystery of union was the consort of Arthur the
King, and to this extent the sacramental imagery offers
the signs of failure. In the case of Helayne the symbo-
lism only deflects from perfection at a single point, which
is that of a second meeting with Lancelot under almost
similar circumstances. I must not specify them here,
except in so far as to say that there was a certain in-
cursion of common motive into that which belonged
otherwise to the sacramental side of things, so far as she
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
was concerned. I can imagine nothing in the whole
course of literature to compare with the renunciation of
this maiden, on whom the pure light of the Graal had
fallen for seasons and years, and who was called upon by
the exigencies of the Quest to make that sacrifice which
is indicated by the great romance. It is at this point
that the Book of the Knight Lancelot sets aside finally
all sense of triviality and is assumed into the Kingdom
of the Mysteries.
The motherhood of King Pelles' daughter, because of
her consanguinity with the mysteries, of which she is an
assistant-guardian under the Hereditary Keeper, occurs
as the result of an intercourse which has some aspects of
a magical marriage, and, considering all its circumstances,
it is difficult at this stage to speculate about all that
which lies behind it. We may almost say that the Lesser
Mysteries took flesh for a period under an ordained en-
chantment and were ill at ease in their envelope. Having
regard to Galahad's election, the response which he made
thereto, and the achievement which in fine crowned it,
the manner of his birth is no longer even a stain ; it is
a triviality, the sufficing cause of which removes the
suggestion of profanation in respect of the Holy Place
which by that unusual conception drew to the term of
its ministry. I can understand that the mind unversed
in the harmony of the whole scheme may think that the
generation of Galahad should have been left in a cloud of
uncertainty and himself without declared father or mother,
like the mystic King of Salem. We have, however, to
remember that what we now term bastardy does not rank
in the romances exactly as a stain upon origin ; it is almost
a conventional mode of begetting heroes-in-chief, and
that which obtains for Galahad obtains for the ideal hero
and king who was the son according to the flesh of Uther
Pendragon. As no romances ascribe a higher importance
to chastity, and even to virginity, than the Graal legends,
so — antecedently at least — their writers had every reason
to attach its proper degree of value to the pre-eminence
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and sanctity of the nuptial bond ; but there was that in
the antecedents of Lancelot which made him the only
possible father for the most exotic flower of chivalry
who was the predestined Graal winner, but at the same
time nothing could insure that possibility, except in the
absence of his marriage.
So, therefore, Galahad is begotten in the fulness of time,
and over all connected therewith falls suddenly the veil of
concealment. Though on one occasion he was seen as a
babe by Sir Bors in the Holy Place, we do not know certainly
where he was born or by whom nurtured ; but if we are
guided by the sequel, as it follows in the Great Quest,
it was probably away from the Graal Castle and with
mystic nurses. When we first meet him he is among
the pageants and holy places of the mysteries of official
religion. Subsequently he is led towards his term by
one who seems a steward of other mysteries, and when
the quest begins he passes at once into the world of
parable and symbol, having firstly been consecrated
as a knight by his own father, who does not apparently
know him, who acts under the direction of the stewards,
while Galahad dissembles any knowledge that he might
be assumed to possess. He has come, so far as we can
say, out of the hidden places of the King. He bears
the outward signs of the Mysteries, and has an imputed
prescience of events in a certain chain of cause and effect.
He passes through adventures as a man passes through
visions, and he has many combats, but they are chiefly of
such an order that the alternative title of the Great Quest
might well be the Spiritual Combat. In the quests which
he undertakes, although there is nominally one castle in
which the Graal has its normal abode, it is yet a moving
wonder, and a studied comparison might show that it is
more closely connected with the Eucharistic mystery than
it is according to the other romances, the Longer Prose
Perceval excepted. Still, an efficacious mass is being said
everywhere in the world. The Graal is more especially
the secret of high sanctity. Galahad himself is the
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mystery of spiritual chivalry exemplified in human form ;
his history is one of initiation, and his term is to see
God. As compared with the rest of the literature,
we enter in his legend upon new ground, and are on
the eminence of Mont Salvatch rather than among the
normal offices of chivalry. It is more especially this
legend which is regarded by scholarship as the last out-
come of the ascetic element introduced into the Graal
cycle ; but it is not understood that throughout the
period of the middle ages the mystic life manifested only
under an ascetic aspect, or with an environment of that
kind. The Galahad romance is not ascetic after the
ordinary way, or as the term is commonly accepted ; it
has an interior quality which places it above that degree,
and this quality is the open sense of the mystic life. But
the gate of the mystic life is assuredly the ascetic gate,
in the same manner that the normal life of religion has
morality as the door thereof. Those who have talked
of asceticism meant in reality to speak of the super-
natural life, of which the Galahad romance is a kind of
archetypal picture. Though Wolfram, on the authority
of Guiot, may have told what he called the true story,
that story was never recited till the creation of the
Galahad legend. The atmosphere of the romance gives
up Galahad as the natural air gives up the vision from
beyond. It is the story of the arch-natural man who
comes to those who will receive him. He issues from
the place of the mystery as Lancelot came from fairyland,
or at least a world of enchantment. The atmosphere is
that of great mysteries, the odour that of the sanctuary
withdrawn behind the Hallows of the outward Holy
Places. Galahad's entire life is bound up so completely
with the Quest to which he is dedicated that apart there-
from he can scarcely be said to live. The desire of a
certain house not made with hands has so eaten him up
that he has never entered the precincts of the halls of
passion. He is indeed faithful and true, but earthly
attraction is foreign to him, even in its exaltation. Even
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his meetings with his father are shadowy and not of this
world — a characteristic which seems the more prominent
when he is the better fulfilling what would be under-
stood by his filial duty. It is not that he is explicitly
outside the sphere of sense and its temptations, but that
his actuating motives are of the transmuted kind. In
proportion, his quest is of the unrealised order ; it is the
working of a mystery within the place of a mystery ; and
it is in comparison therewith that we may understand
the deep foreboding which fell upon the heart of Arthur
when the flower of his wonderful court went forth to
seek the Graal. In this respect the old legend illustrates
the fact that many are called but few are chosen ; and
even in the latter class it is only the rarest flower of the
mystic chivalry which can be thought of as chosen among
thousands. Of the Perceval Quest there are many ver-
sions, but of Galahad there is one story only. So are the
peers of the Round Table a great company, but Galahad
is one. So also, of the high kings and princes, there are
some who come again, and of such is the royal Arthur ;
but there are some who return no more, and of these is
Galahad. He has not been understood even by great
poets, for there could be scarcely a worse interpretation
of his position than a poem, like that of Tennyson, in
which he celebrates his strength on the ground that his
heart is pure. Let me add, in conclusion of this part,
that at the time of his coming the Graal went about in
the land, looking for those it belonged to, and that in
this respect Galahad had the true secret of Le Moyen de
paruenir. It has its secret place of abiding, its altar of
repose, at Corbenic, the Graal Castle, but it appears at
the King's court — and this is exclusive to the story. The
voice of the Quest passed through all Britain, in part by
common report — because all the Arthurian knighthood
bound itself to assume the task — but in part also by the
miracle of unknown voices and of holy fore-knowledge.
The Graal itself is not the official sacrament, or it is that
and something which exceeds it. If it were otherwise
/-» r — •
JO /
'The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
there would be no sense in the declaration made by a
hermit that certain knights may seek but shall never find
it. On the Eucharistic side, it is the vision of Christ
Himself, and the mystery of Divine Providence is mani-
fested strangely therein ; it works through faith, repre-
sented as the way of vision and the gate of things unseen.
In the poem of De Borron and other early versions, the
Sacred Vessel is invisible — and that utterly — to persons
of evil life ; but, though still under its due veils, it is
shown in the Quest more openly, and on one occasion
even to all who are present — good knights and indifferent.
The vision imposes silence, and this seems to have been
always its office, but it is that kind of silence which comes
about by the mode of ecstasy, and in the case of Lancelot
it is described rather fully, as if there were a particular
intention discernible in his advancement through those
grades of his partial initiation, when he sees without
participating. One form of this ecstasy seems to be
connected with the working of the Holy Spirit. But
there is no assurance to be inferred from favour to
further favour, since, on another occasion, the Graal is
invisible to Lancelot when it is seen at the same time
and in the same place by a company of white knights.
Of such is the Vessel of the legend and as regards
the search after it, the elect knight is told that God
entered into this world to free men from the wearisome
adventures which were on them and from the evil belief.
A close parallel is instituted between the Knight and
Christ, since Galahad came to terminate the adventurous
and evil destinies in this island of Britain. For this
reason he is likened to the Son of the High Father, who
brought souls out of thrall, and even a demon confesses
to him as the way of truth.
I conceive that there is little occasion to recite the
story of the Quest which is available after so many
manners of English vesture to young and old alike. At
the Vigil of Pentecost, Lancelot was carried by a gentle-
woman to a Holy House, where he was required to
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The Greater Chronicles
knight the son of his own body, but, as we have seen,
without learning his name or recognising him after any
manner. Galahad, who " was semely and demure as a
dove, with all maner of good features," was acquainted,
undoubtedly, with his geniture, but he made no claim
on his father. After this mode, at the beginning of his
progress, was he consecrated by the secular order and
received into the degree of chivalry. He came forth
from the sacred precincts, being a convent of white
nuns, wherein it is said that he had been nourished, and
was brought to the Court of King Arthur by " a good
old man and an auncyent clothed al in whyte," who
saluted the company at table with words of peace.
Against this arrival the palace had been prepared
strangely by the emblazonment of letters of gold on the
Siege Perilous — testifying that the time had come when
it should be at length occupied — and by the appear-
ance of a great stone in the river outside, with a sword
embedded therein, which none present could withdraw.
The ancient man uplifted the draperies of the chair, and
there was found a new emblazonment : <l this is the
sege of Galahalt the haute prynce." The youth is seated
accordingly, as a prince who was not of this world, and
it was seen that he was clothed in red arms, though
without sword or shield. But he had begun to move
amidst enchantments ; the sword implanted in the stone
was to him predestined, and by him it was withdrawn,
after which he revealed by the word of his own mouth
that it was that weapon wherewith the good Knight
Balyn had slain Balan, his brother. At the festival which
followed this episode the Graal, under its proper veils,
appeared in the hall, illuminating all things by the grace of
the Holy Ghost and imposing that sacred silence — already
mentioned — in the presence of the Great Mysteries. As
the light enlightened them spiritually, and to each up-
lifted the countenance of each in beauty, so the sacred
vision fed them abundantly in their bodies ; but because
of those draperies which shrouded the vessel, the great
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
chivalry vowed to go in quest thereof, that they might
see it more openly. After this manner began the mystic
inquisition which, by a messenger from Nascien the
Hermit — who was the early Keeper of Galahad according
to the Vulgate Merlin and the recipient of those revelations
contained in the Book of the Holy Graal — was forbidden
to natural women, like that of Masonry, though the
ministers of the Graal were maidens, and if Masonry had
retained its secrets in conscious memory they would be
served by women who were virgins.
The first adventures of Galahad were those which
befell him at an Abbey of white monks, when he who
was as yet without shield received that which Joseph II.
gave in the far past to Evalach that he might prevail
against the King of Egypt — that also which Joseph
crossed with his blood on his death-bed. It was a sign
that the evil adventures would be ended by Galahad.
Previously, it had been a shield perilous to all who used
it, because it was predestined to one, but I do not
find that it had a special office in the later part of the
legend.
Of the Graal and the other Hallows, of their ministry
and mystery, and of all things connected therewith, we
have heard in their proper sections otherwise. After
what manner Lancelot, Perceval and Bors passed through
worlds of parable — as through places of purification—
I do not speak here, and even in respect of the High
Prince, I am concerned only in so far as his story com-
pletes the things which were left over from other branches
of the Greater Chronicles ; the healing of Mordrains, the
King — penitent of all the centuries; the release of Simeon ;
and the manumission of the unfaithful Moses. But of
this last I find nothing in the Quest. As regards Simeon,
the abbey which was visited by Lancelot was reached by
Galahad towards the close of his time of quest, and there
he beheld a burning wood in a croft under the minster,
but the " flammynge faylled, and the fyre staunched" as
he drew thereto, and there paused for a space. The
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The Greater Chronicles
voice of Simeon from within greeted him in a good hour
when he was to draw a soul out of earthly pain into the
joy of Paradise. It said also that he who spoke was of
his kindred, and that for three hundred and fifty-four
years he had been thus purged of the sin which he had
done against Joseph of Arimathaea. Galahad took the
body in his arms, bore it into the minster, had service
said over it, and interred it before the high altar. Of
such was the rest of Simeon.
It was at another abbey that he came upon the age-
long vigil of King Mordrains. Galahad had the hands
of healing, and seeing that he was born in the sanctuary,
it may be said that in this romance the healing comes
from within. These were the words of the King :
" Galahad the seruant of Jhesu Cryst whos comynge
I haue abyden soo longe, now enbrace me & lete me
reste on thy breste, so that I may reste bitwene thine
armes, for thou art a clene vyrgyn aboue all Knyghtes
as the floure of the lely, in whome vyrgynyte is sygne-
fyed, & thou art the rose the whiche is the floure of all
good vertues, & in coloure of fyre. For the fyre of the
holy ghoost is taken so in thee that my flesshe which
was of dede oldnesse, is become yong ageyne." When
Galahad heard his words, he covered his whole body in
a close embrace, in which position the King prays Christ
to visit him, wherein and whereafter the soul departed
from his body. So was the curious impertinent, who
had been called but not chosen at that time, after his
long penance, at length forgiven the offence, and was
taken into the great peace, fortified with all Rites of
the most secret and Holy Church of the Hidden
Graal.
The Ship of Solomon had, prior to these episodes,
conveyed the questing knights — Galahad, Perceval and
Bors — from point to point of their progress ; it had
taken Lancelot a certain distance in his son's company,
till they commended each other to God for the rest of
their mortal life ; it had borne the sister of Perceval,
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
who of her own hair and of silk, combined with precious
stones, had braided the true and proper girdle for the
Sword of David, to replace the mean girdle attached
to it by the wife of Solomon. But she had yielded
her life before the healing and passing in God of Mor-
drains, and had been placed by her proper desire in
another ship, with a covenant on her part that it should
meet the questers at Sarras, when the Ship of Solomon
brought them to that bourne of their voyaging. It re-
mained only that those three should now gather at Cor-
benic for the healing of the maimed King Pellehan,
about whose place and identity we have seen that the
text offers some elements of minor confusion. This is
he whom we must suppose to have received the Dolorous
Stroke at the hands of Balyn.
As the path of quest drew towards its central point, the
three, who had traversed various converging roads, met,
as it is said, at travers, knowing that the adventures of
Logres were at last achieved. They entered within the
Castle, and King Pelles greeted them with great joy. In
this as in some other romances grave importance is
attached to resoldering the Broken Sword, and that which
was brought by Eleazer, the King's son, was that with
which Joseph II. was once stricken through the thighs.
It was set perfectly by Galahad when the others had
essayed in vain, and was then given to Bors, as a good
knight and a worthy man. What followed thereon was
the sustenance of the elect Graal knights 'after a spiritual
manner, to the exclusion of the general assembly, who
were dismissed from the presence. Those who remained
were three and three, namely, Galahad, Perceval and
Bors, for the first triad ; King Pelles, his son Eleazar,
and a maiden who was the King's niece, for the second
triad. To these were joined certain pilgrims who were
knights also, namely, three of Gaul, three of Ireland,
and three of Denmark. Finally, there was brought in
the maimed King, and thereon a voice said that two
of those who were present did not belong to the Quest,
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The Greater Chronicles
at which words King Pelles — although he was the
Keeper — rose up with his son and departed. They were,
therefore, thirteen in all, and one of these was a woman,
who was present with them when Joseph of Arimathaea,
the first Bishop of Christendom, came down with angels
from heaven, and celebrated an arch-natural Mass in the
Holy Place. After the Kiss of Peace given to Galahad,
and communicated by him to his fellows, the celebrants
dissolved, but out of the Graal itself there came the
Saviour of all, with the signs of His passion upon Him,
and communicated to them all in the Eucharist. He also
vanished, and Galahad, who had received his instructions,
went up to the maimed King and anointed him with the
blood flowing from the Hallowed Spear. Thereupon,
he, being healed, rose up and gave thanks to God. It is
said that, in the sequel of time, he united himself to a
company of white monks.
" Sir," said Galahad to the Great Master at the close
of the Mysteries, " why shalle not these other felawes
goo with us ? " —that is to say, unto Sarras, the reference
being to the nine mysterious knights. The answer
hereto was significant : " For this cause : for ryght as
I departed my postels, one here and another there soo I
will that ye departe, and two of yow shall dye in my
servyse, but one of you shal come ageyne and telle
tydynges." So, therefore, the company of the adepts
dissevered ; but we have seen how Galahad, Perceval
and Bors were carried by the Ship of Solomon to Sarras,
"in the p^rtyes of Babylone," called an island in the
Quest. There met them, in accordance with her cove-
nant, that other vessel, which carried the body of
Perceval's most holy sister. We have seen also how
the soul of Galahad departed, and it rests only to say
that Perceval died in a hermitage, but Sir Bors returned
to Logres, bearing the messages of his brethren, but
especially of Galahad to his father : " And whanne he
had said these wordes Galahad went to Percyual and
kyssed hym & commaunded hym to God, and soo he
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'The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
went to sire Bors, & kyssed hym, and commaunded hym
to God, and sayde : Fayre lord, sale we me to my lord
syr launcelot my fader. And as soone as ye see hym,
byd hym remember of this unstable world."
The bodies of Perceval and Galahad were buried in
the spiritualities of Sarras, which may have been in some
sense a city of initiation, though until their coming
it was ruled by evil rather than good. It was not the
abiding place, but that of the final trial for the stewards
of the Mystery, and at first they were imprisoned therein ;
but Galahad was afterwards made King. The Spear was
taken into heaven, together with the Holy Vessel, but
Bors returned — as it has been intimated — carrying the
re-soldered Broken Sword, as if grace had been removed,
but not that which now may have symbolised the coming
destruction of the Round Table. Of the Sword of
David we hear nothing further, nor do we know what
became of the Ship of Solomon. As the symbol of Faith,
it may have continued voyaging, but on other considera-
tions it had done its work : there was no reason why it
should remain when Galahad had gone.
But perhaps the saddest mystery of all is the end of
King Pelles himself, and how it fared with him after
the departure of the Graal. It will be seen that the
Quest versions offer many alternatives, but there is one
text only which says that the Hereditary Keeper was
dispossessed utterly and left in an empty sanctuary.
We have now, and in fine, to account as we can for the
great disaster of the whole experiment. The earthly
knighthood undertakes, in despite of the high earthly
king, a quest to which it is in a sense perhaps called but
for which it is in no sense chosen. The result, as I have
said, is that the chivalry of the world is broken and the
kingdom is destroyed, while the object of all research is
said to be taken away. It was not, therefore, the conceal-
ment of the Sacred Vessel, but its manifestation rather,
which brought ruin to the Round Table. It went about
in the world of Logres, and the ruin followed, because the
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The Greater Chronicles
world was not worthy. In a certain manner it is the
mystery of the Graal itself which gives forth Galahad as
its own manifestation, in the order of the visible body, and
sends him on designed offices of healing, with a warrant to
close a specific cycle of times. When the Graal romances
say that the Sacred Vessel was seen no more, or was carried
up to heaven, they do not mean that it was taken away,
in the sense that it had become unattainable, but that it
was — as some of them say also — in concealment. It is
certain that the great things are always in concealment,
and are perhaps the more hidden in proportion to their
more apparently open manifestation. In this respect, the
distinction between the natural and supernatural Graal,
which is made by the prose Lancelot, has a side of highest
value. Let us reserve for a moment the consideration
of the Hallows as mere relics, and in so far as the Cup
is concerned, let us remember the two forms of sus-
tenance which it offered — in correspondence closely
enough with the ideas of Nature and Grace. It should
be understood, however, that between the mysteries
themselves there is a certain superincession, and so also
there is in the romances what the light heart of criticism
regards as un pen confus, namely, some disposition to talk
of the one office in the terms of the other. At the same
time certain romances give prominence to the greater and
others to the lesser office.
IX
THE WELSH QUEST OF GALAHAD
It is considered that this translation, which is referable
to the early part of the fifteenth century, was made from
another codex than that which was used by Malory for
the Morte a" Arthur, but it embodied material from the
Book of the Holy Graal, which may mean that the
anonymous author of the rendering was either the com-
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
piler of a harmony or the simple translator of a manu-
script corresponding to the texts followed by Dr.
Furnivall in his edition of the Quest. At the same time,
outside all evidences of mistranslation, the Welsh version
of the Quest itself differs unquestionably in several par-
ticulars from all codices which are known to scholarship,
and it seems quite certain that the variations are not those
of invention. On the one hand, there is a certain slight
attenuation of the mystic atmosphere, though the general
features remain ; for example, that enhanced knowledge
of one another which is attributed to the knights who
saw the Holy Vessel, under the veils thereof, at the
King's table, is unmentioned in the Welsh text. Alter-
natively, there are other respects in which there is an
added disposition to lean on the spiritual side of things,
and this is manifested plainly in a few crucial cases. The
Table of the Lord's Supper is described as that which
fed the body and the soul with heavenly food, while
the Graal itself is said to provide a spiritual nourish-
ment, which is sent by the Holy Ghost to him who
seeks in grace to sit at the table thereof. The close
connection between the Sacred Vessel and the office of
the Divine Spirit — which is so evident in the metrical
romance of De Borron — is also apparent, and one who
is on the quest is told that by falling into sin he will
fail to see that Spirit, even as Lancelot failed. Outside
those wanderings of the Holy Graal which are recorded
in the French texts, there are references to its mani-
festation at sundry places in Logres — or there more
especially, but not there to the exclusion of all other
countries. Finally as to this part, I recognise a note of
undeclared mystery as regards the House of the Hallows.
There was the permanent shrine of the Holy Vessel, but
whether it was visible always to those who dwelt within
or at certain times and seasons is not apparent, and remains
indeed doubtful on the evidence of all the literature. It
is therefore open to question whether it was the daily
nourishment of the House, or whether its varied ministry
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The Greater Chronicles
was contingent on the arrival of a stranger who was pre-
pared so far sufficiently that he was admitted within the
gates. It was the latter probably, because Lancelot rested
there for four days ; but it was not until the fifth day,
and then in the midst of the supper, that the Graal ap-
peared and filled all with the meats most loved by them.
The Welsh Quest, like its prototype of Northern
France, draws then from the Book of the Holy Graal, but
not from one of those codices with which we have been
made acquainted so far by the pains of scholarship. For
example, the account of the Second Table is given with
specific variations, though there is nothing to justify their
enumeration in this place, except that the son of Joseph
is said to have occupied the seat which corresponded to
that of Christ, and no one ventured to take it after him.
It was not so occupied in the parent historical text, and
we know, of course, that the Siege Perilous in other
presentations of the legend is that of Judas Iscariot.
What appears to be the Dolorous Stroke in the
Welsh Quest is exceedingly involved, but the account
is as follows : (#) King Lambor was father of the Lame
King, and was at war with King Urlain, formerly a
Saracen. (£) Lambor was forced to flight, and in doing
so reached the seashore, where he found the Ship of
Solomon. (<:) He took up the Sword therein and smote
Urlain, so that he and his horse were cut in two pieces.
This occurred in England, and was the first blow that
was ever given with the weapon. (^/) The King who was
slain is said to have been so holy that great vengeance
was taken by God for that blow, (e) In neither kingdom
for a long time was there found any fruit, everything
being dried up, so that the land is called to this day the
Decayed Kingdom. It will be seen that this is in direct
contradiction to the particulars in the Book of the Holy
Graal concerning the death of Lambor, the keeper at
that time of the Sacred Vessel. It follows also that the
story of Balyn and Balan was unknown to the Welsh
translator.
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The Lame King was the Uncle of Perceval, and so
good was his manner of living that his like could not be
found in the world. One day he was hunting, and came
to the seashore, where he also found the ship. In spite
of the warning written therein, he entered without fear,
and drew the Sword partly from the scabbard. He was
struck by a spear in the thigh, and was maimed from that
time forward. In the French Quest of Galahad this
episode is attributed to King Pelles.
As an illustration of general intention prevailing
through the Welsh Quest, a hermit reminds Gawain that
the dignity of knighthood was conferred upon him —
among other things — for the defence of the Church, and
as this specific statement is part only of the general
atmosphere through which the romance moves, it is itself
an eloquent comment on the alleged underlying hostility
to official ecclesiasticism which is sometimes traced in the
literature. The condition of Wales at the time of the
Quest, as it is depicted in the Welsh text, is not an
encouraging report regarding the last stronghold of the
Celtic Church, but it is possible that the worst particulars
are things which the translator has interpolated.
Whether in their agreement or variation, the details of
the story do not call to be scheduled here, but there are
a few points which may be noted with all brevity.
Galahad is described as the foster-child of the abbey
where Lancelot finds him, and he is commanded to
watch his arms prior to receiving knighthood. He is
introduced at the Court of King Arthur as the desired
Knight descended from the line of the prophet David
and Joseph of Arimathaea : on him rest all the adven-
tures and wonders of Great Britain and all countries. He
is called the son of the daughter of King Pelles, but the
later story speaks invariably of the Graal Castle as that
of King Pelour, whom I should identify as the maimed
and abdicated Keeper who was healed by Galahad in the
French version, of which, however, there is no mention
in the Welsh Quest. The manifested festival of the
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The Greater Chronicles
Graal in the hall of Arthur is heralded by an unknown
messenger — a lady vested in white on a white palfrey,
who gives warning concerning its advent, and this is
found also in Malory's version, but he follows a defective
text, for in him the prophecy is uttered after the event
itself. So great are the delicacies at the table, by the
provision of the Sacred Vessel, so much are they dwelt
on in the Welsh version, that the resolution of the knights
in respect of the coming Quest has the aspect of material
appetite, and they resolve not to rest till they can eat at
another table where they will be fed as rarely. According
to Gawain, there is no such place on earth except the
Court of King Peleur. When the Quest is thus under-
taken Galahad says nothing. All this is an accident of
aspect, for elsewhere it is stated (#) that no one shall see
the Holy Graal except through the gate which is called
Confession, and this is obviously the gate of the Eucha-
rist ; (£) that the final return of Bors was designed to
exhibit the spirituality of that good which at the last end
of things was lost by so many on account of their sins.
The time comes when Galahad swears upon the relics
with the others to maintain the Quest, and, apart from
this position — which has not been understood by scholar-
ship— there are episodes and intimations which seem in-
tended to show that the natural child of the sanctuary
was not permitted to know all — though he had that
which was implied in his heirship — until, in common
with the others, he undertook the great enterprise. The
Knights proceeded on their journey weeping and in great
sorrow — that is to say, with failing hearts, foreboding
the discounselling of so many and all the disaster coming
after : Euntes ibant et flebant.
There is one reference to Eleazar, the son of King
Pelles, and one to a Knight named Argus, who, by an
unthinkable confusion, is said to be the son of Helayne,
as if this daughter of the House had married or begotten
subsequently. The hermit Nasciens, whose identity is
so important for the Book of the Holy Graal, is described
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as the son-in-law of Evalach, instead of his brother by
marriage, as he appears in the extant text. He is found
on one occasion by Gawain in a very poor cell or hermitage,
with a small chapel attached.
When the questing Knights arrive at the Graal Castle,
it is not said that they see either Pelles or Peleur, nor
are these or Eleazar present at the manifestation of the
Holy Graal. The maiden who remains in the text of
Malory is also bidden to depart, following in this respect
the chief French manuscripts. He who comes down from
Heaven as the first Bishop of Christendom is distin-
guished rightly from Joseph of Arimathasa, and is there-
fore the second Joseph. When he celebrates the secret
mass of the Graal, he takes out a wafer from the Vessel,
which shows that it was used as a ciborium. In the
divine discourse thereafter, it is said by Christ that many
a good man has come to the Castle through the grace
of the Holy Ghost. As regards the nine mysterious
Knights who are not to accompany the three on their
journey to Sarras, the parting of those with these takes
place amidst great brotherhood, and each of them says
who he is, but the nine are not named in the text.
Galahad asks them to salute Arthur if they go to his
Court, and they reply that they shall do so gladly, but
they do not say that they will go. Probably they went
back by another way into their own countries.
Now, these are the chief points which I promised to
set forth ; and there is one thing more only — that the
Spear was not taken to Sarras, nor was it removed to
Heaven with the Sacred Vessel. In conclusion as to the
Quest of Galahad, the presence of that maiden who was
niece of King Pelles at the great vision of the Graal
seems without authority in extant French texts ; it is
therefore peculiar to Malory and the version which
he followed. If it were possible to trace the variations
of the Quest through developments of the Tristram
cycle, we should meet with very curious details, but they
are not necessary to our subject.
BOOK VI
THE GERMAN CYCLE OF THE
HOLT GRAAL
THE ARGUMENT
I. THE PARSIFAL OF WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH. —
Its valuation by recognised criticism — Alleged theological and
ecclesiastical position — Evidence of the surface sense — Specific
analogies with French romances of the Perceval cycle — The
triad in the Keeper ship of the Graal — Geniture of Parsifal
— Of Gamuret and Herzeleide — Of Parsifal's cousin Sigune
—At the Court of King Arthur— The Red Knight— The
Brother of the Graal King — Queen Kondwiramur — The
marriage of Parsifal — The Fisher King — The Castle of Mont
Salvatch — The pageant and bewrayed question — Of things
which followed thereafter — Of Kundrie, the Graal Messenger
— Parsifal hardens his heart — The pilgrim band — The
J JT o
Hermit's story of the Graal — Parsifal's election — The King's
Healing — Specific Distinctions from romances of the French
cycle — The morganatic union of Gamuret — The history of
Kundrie — The magician Klingsor — Of Feirfeis, the brother
of Parsifal — His union with the maiden of the Graal — Of
Pr ester John — The history of Lohengrin — The Graal in
Wolfram's poem — Its sacramental connections — Its feeding
qualities — Its antecedent history — The bleeding Lance — The
Kings wounding — Of the Duchess Orgeluse — The Castle and
its chivalry — The source of Wolfram — The story of Guiot
de Provence — The judgment on Chretien de Troyes — The
Lapis Exilis — Of a second sense in the Parsifal. II.
GLEANINGS CONCERNING THE LOST QUEST OF GUIOT
DE PROVENCE. — Evidence of the Saone de.Nausay/br the
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existence of Guiofs 'poem — His alleged identity with a
Bishop of Durham — What follows therefrom — The source
of Chretien — The Graal in Guiot and Wolfram — The reli-
gious position of Guiot — His curious learning — An illus-
tration from Kabalism. III. SIDELIGHTS FROM THE
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE QUESTS. — The Spanish
Merlin and Quest of Galahad — The Portuguese Quest —
A Viennese manuscript — An inference from these docu-
ments. IV. THE CROWN OF ALL ADVENTURES. — The
Quest-in-chief of G aw ain — Heinrich and Chretien — Hein-
rich and Guiot — Keynote of the story — The House of
Glass — The companions of the Quest — The House of
Death — Its dream of splendour — The Order of the Ban-
quet— The Graal Vision — The Kings sustenance — Wine
of forge tf nines s — The Question asked — The Hidden Secret
—The Kings release — The departure of the Graal — Con-
clusion as to this Quest. V. THE TITUREL OF ALBRECHT
VON SCHARFENBERG. — Literary history of the 'poem — The
incorporations from Wolfram — Its reversion to the cycle of
Northern France — The Graal as a chalice — Pretensions of
the 'poem as a complete history of the Sacred Vessel and
its Wardens — Ascetic aspects — Removal of the Graal to
the Land of Pr ester 'John — Subsequent removal of the
ancient Sanctuary — Parsifal as the heir of the Priest-
King — The Kings legend — King Arthur s search for the
Graal. VI. THE DUTCH LANCELOT. — Date of this
compilation — Outline of its contents — The Quest of Per-
ceval— His failure and 'penitence — His restitution — His
inclusion with Galahad in the Quest — Summary as to the
Dutch Lancelot — Conclusion as to the German cycle.
374
BOOK VI
THE GERMAN CYCLE OF THE HOLT
GRAAL
I
THE PARSIFAL OF WOLFRAM FON
ESCHENBACH
THOSE who in recent times have discussed the poem of
Wolfram with titles to consideration on account of their
equipment have been impressed not alone by the signal
distinctions between this German poem and the Perceval
legends as we know them in Northern France, but by
a superiority of spiritual purpose and a higher ethical
value which are thought to characterise the knightly
epic. For the moment, at least, it can be said on my
own part that we are in the presence of a poet whose
work is full of gorgeous pictures, all rude diction not-
withstanding, and all contemporary reproaches made
upon that score. To me — but as one who on such
subjects speaks with a sense of remoteness — the traces of
Oriental influence seem clear in the poem, partly in its
decorative character and partly in its allusions to places
— after every allowance has been made for geographical
confusions. Such traces are allowed, and they are referred
to the source of Wolfram, about which I must say
something in this section to introduce the separate
inquiry which will follow hereafter. But we are asked
in our turn to recognise that the Parsifal is the most
heterodox branch of the whole Graal cycle, though it
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is said to be the work of an ecclesiastic. This idea is
represented by authoritative statements on the part of
scholars who have scarcely produced their evidence, and
by sporadic discursive remarks on the part of some other
writers who could have been better equipped. In this
manner we have (#) the negative inference drawn from
a simple fact — as, for example, that the Parsifal does not
exhibit that hostility towards Mohammedan people and
things which characterised Crusading times — but as much
might be said about other texts of the Graal ; (£) the
positive opinion that the chivalry of the Graal Temple
resembles an association formed without the pale of the
Church rather than within — which on the authority of
the poem itself seems untrue, and this simply. Those
who expound these views look for an explanation to the
influences exercised theoretically by Knights Templars
and the sects of Southern France — which possibilities
will be considered in their proper place in respect of all
the literature. As a preliminary, by way of corrective,
I desire to record here that if the Parsifal is heterodox,
its elements of this order have been imbedded below
the surface, and then deeply, but whether it implies in
this manner any secret religious claims which are not
of sect or heresy is another question. On the surface it
would be easy to make a tabulation of many points
which manifest an absolute correspondence with Church
doctrine and ordinance ; but it will be sufficient for the
moment to say that Mass is celebrated and heard as it
is in the other romances ; that confession is not less
necessary ; and so far as there is allusion in particular
to dogmatic teaching, that it is of the accepted kind,
as of the conditions and day of salvation : Mary is the
Queen of Heaven, and the Lord Jesus dies as man on
the Cross ; the Divinity of Three Persons is included
in one God. Sometimes there is an allusion which
looks dubious, but it is mere confusion, as when a
hermit speaks of a soul being drawn out of hell, where
the reference is of course to the purgatorial state.
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The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
The story of the Quest in Wolfram may be con-
sidered in the interests of clearness under two heads, the
first of which is designed to develop the specific analogies
with other romances of the Perceval cycle, while in the
second there are exhibited the specific points of dis-
tinction. As regards the analogies, it is to be under-
stood that I reserve the right to omit any or every
episode which does not concern my purpose. It is to
be understood further that all analogies are under their
own reserve in respect of variation. Let it be recalled,
in the first place, that the historical side of the Perceval
legend in the Conte del Graal of Chretien is in a certain
state of confusion. That poet left so much to be desired
on the score of clearness about the early life of his hero
that another poet prepared some antecedent information,
but he spoke according to tradition and forgot that the
matter with which he intervened was not in complete ac-
cordance with Chretien's own account, so far as he had one.
All continuations of the Conte were either too late for
Wolfram or were for some other reason unknown by him ;
but it may be said that Gautier and Manessier produced
their romantic narratives following several prototypes, not
of necessity connected with their character-in-chief ab
origine symboli. Gerbert, who was evidently under the
obedience of a prototype which was peculiar to himself
in the Northern French cycles, had perhaps some lost
Perceval Quest, if not that actually which we connect
with the name of Guiot. With the Didot Perceval
Wolfram has only those points of concurrence which
belong to the common primordial source, and with the
Longer Prose Perceval his features of likeness are in so
far as both texts stand together by themselves. Under
these qualifications, the salient lines of correspondence by
way of likeness with the French cycle may be collected
as follows.
The genealogy in the Parsifal is simple ; it is the
triad, which is permanent on earth as the Holy and
Undivided Trinity is eternal in Heaven. But in most
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"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
texts the Trinity of the Graal Keepership is by way of
succession and therefore feeble ; Wolfram, on the other
hand, ends with a perfect symbol in the union of those
who have reigned with him who shall reign henceforward,
whereas all other quests of Perceval leave him alone
in his kingdom at the end absolute of the great adven-
ture. The German Kings of the Graal are Titurel,
Frimutel and Amfortas. The first is the founder of
the dynasty — in respect of the Graal Keepership — and
he remains alive, like Brons in Robert de Borron, the
maimed King Pellehan in the Quest of Galahad, and
that nameless hidden sovereign who anteceded King
Fisherman in the Conte del Graal. The second has
died in war, which was not in the cause of the Graal,
and it is partly for this reason that Perceval must inter-
vene to renew the triad. The nearest analogy to this
is in the Didot Perceval, which after the achievement of
the Graal pictures the questing knight abiding in the
place of the Hallows with Blaise and Merlin as two
substituted keepers, though at the close it detaches the
prophet and puts him into mystic retreat, as if at the
term of the ages — when Avalon gives up its exiles — he
might again manifest and testify. There is also another
analogy, but this is of the implied kind, for in the
Parsifal and the Didot Perceval he who has achieved the
Quest remains, and the Sacred Vessel — in apparent
perpetuity — that is to say, in the House of the Hidden
Hallows. Both elect knights — shadows of a single per-
sonality— arrived, that they might stay in fine.
The father of Parsifal was a king's son — as he is
occasionally in the other romances — and it is said in more
than one place that he came of the fairy lineage. It was
on the mother's side that the youth was by generation
a son of the house, and therefore entitled, supposing
that he was otherwise prepared, to return therein. She
was Herzeleide, sister of the Graal King and Queen,
in her own right, not only of Wales but Anjou. The
father was named Gamuret, but in the course of
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The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
knightly adventure he was slain shortly after his
marriage and the birth of his only son in respect of
this union. That he may be saved from the fatal
knowledge which in those days was involved by the life
of chivalry, there follows — with many variations — the
concealment of Parsifal by his mother in the wild places
and woodlands. It does not appear what she did to
insure the rule of the kingdoms, but her result was
that the two countries fell into other hands. She who
had been born, as one may suppose, in that secondary
light which is the shadow of the Holy Graal — since
she does not seem to have been an inbred Daughter
of the House — might have acted better and more
wisely to have reared her son — in the spirit and intention
at least — as a child of the Sacred Talisman instead of
a wild boy of the woods. Far otherwise than she did
the twice-born Hermit Nasciens, who had Galahad in
his keeping ; far otherwise did they of the White Abbey,
among whom Galahad was found by Lancelot. But
the fatality was working with greater power because she
strove the more ; Parsifal met all the same with the
knights of King Arthur's Court, and rode forth as usual
—not with her consent indeed, but with the dangerous
folly of her cautions — in search of the Grade of Chivalry.
Almost immediately after her parting with Parsifal, she
died in the grief of his loss. He, as in other stories,
reached the pavilion of the Sleeping Lady, and he took
not her ring only but also a buckle. In this instance
she seems to have been unwilling throughout, and the
youth behaved brutally.
Before reaching the Court of King Arthur he met
with his cousin Sigune, and it should be noted here
that there is no sister in this version of the Quest. Of
her he learned his proper name and so much of his
genealogy as was requisite to assure him that he was
the legitimate King of Wales, in the defence of which
right there perished her own lover, whose body remained
in her charge after the mad manner of the romances.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
As geographical names signify little or nothing, the
court of King Arthur was held at Nantes, and on his
arrival thither the old episode of the dwarfs was ex-
changed for that of a maiden who could not laugh
until she beheld the best knight in the world. She
was struck and insulted by Kay for paying this honour
to one of Parsifal's outlandish appearance, and a con-
siderable part of the story is concerned incidentally
with the youth's resolution to avenge her and a certain
silent knight who, after the manner of the dwarfs, found
speech to hail his advent and was also chastised. The
Red Knight appeared as usual and Parsifal obtained
his armour, the grievance being that the knight had
taken a cup from the Round Table and spilt wine
upon the robe of the Queen. But the secondary detail
was a matter of accident and one regretted deeply, for
in this story only the Red Knight is a hero after the
true manner ; he is also the youth's kinsman, and his
death — which occurs as usual — is a stain on Parsifal
rather than to the glory of his prowess.
So proceeds the story, and so far as it follows the
long weariness of the worn way, even its decorations
can lend it only a secondary interest. I think also,
and it must be said, that even in his exaltation the
hero kindles little sympathy, whereas Galahad enthrals
for ever. The next incident in our scheme is Parsifal's
instruction in chivalry, which took place at the castle
of Gurnemanz, who was the brother of the Graal King,
but this relation was not declared to his pupil. As
in the Peredur, he is responsible for the fatality of
the unasked question, and in both cases there is the
same want of logic on the surface which probably covers
a secret intention. The result otherwise of the instruc-
tion was that Parsifal ceased from his folly.
This experience completed, he asked his teacher at
their parting to give him his daughter when he had
done something to deserve her ; but it appears to have
been more in conformity with her father's implied wish
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The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
than through a keen desire of his own, and we hear
nothing further of either. His next task brought him
to Belrepaire — in siege by sea and land and wasted by
famine. There he succoured the Queen Kondwiramour,
who corresponds to Blanchefleur, and there also he
married her. We are now in that region which we
know to have been travelled by Gerbert, and as for
him the espousals left the lovers in virginity, so, accord-
ing to Wolfram, the marriage was not consummated till
the third night. But — whereas a high motive actuated
the two parties in the French romance — in the German
poem there was no mutual concordat but a kind of
spurious chivalry on the hero's side which he overcame
in the end. Parsifal, however, was still espoused only
to the notion of adventure, on which he again set forth,
this time to meet with the Fisher King and to learn
that the Graal Castle was close at hand, like all things
that are greatest. As regards his qualifications for the
visit, it would seem that, even in the Holy Place, he
thought chiefly of knightly combats and wondered how
he should find them in such surroundings. The Fisher
King was Amfortas, the Maimed King, and the procession
was that which I have described previously and at needed
length. The Castle was full of splendour and chivalry,
but it was also full of sadness : the story is one of suf-
fering and sorrow. The relation between host and guest
was that of uncle and nephew, but as usual it did not
transpire on this occasion. Parsifal also failed to ask
the vital question, but it should be noted that, although
grievous sin was attributed to him on this account,
he had not been warned so distinctly — either here or
in the Conte del Graal — that there would be a question
to ask as he was in the Didot Perceval. He went forth
unserved from the Castle, but there is no suggestion
of any external enchantment, nor did he find that
the whole country had been laid under a mysterious
interdict which had rendered it utterly waste, or that
the inhabitants were abandoned to various forms of
3*'
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
distress. On account further of the normal offices of
Nature, it is to be understood that he left the Castle
as a knight who has finished his visit — that is to say,
he rode away ; it was not the Castle which left him
by a sudden process of vanishing. In the world outside
he was reproached by his kinswoman Sigune, who still
had the body of her lover.
The familiar pursuant adventures must be mentioned
briefly. The Lady of the Pavilion was fairly exonerated
by Parsifal and sent with her vanquished lord to the
woman who could not laugh at the court of King
Arthur, where she proved to be the knight's sister, so
that Kay was put to shame. Arthur rose up and set forth
on the quest of Parsifal, who was found in the love-trance
and brought to the royal tent. There he was made a
Knight of the Round Table, and thither came the laidly
Kundrie — that baleful messenger of the Graal, who was
also God's minister — to curse and denounce him for his
ill-fated course at the Castle. She told him much which
belongs to the second branch of our subject, but also of
his mother's death, by which news he was overwhelmed,
and by the shame of the messenger's wrath tempestuous.
He departed from that court as a man who had lost his
faith, yet he went — pro forma at least — on the Quest of
the Graal. After long wanderings he met again with his
cousin Sigune, whose lover had found a sepulchre, near
which she lived as an anchoress and received food from
the Graal which was brought her by the sorceress Kundrie.
At a later period, Parsifal, being still in his sins, and
cherishing no thought of God, met with the pageant of
pilgrims on Good Friday, but his better nature did not
return to him so quickly as in the other stories. In due
course he reached the hold of a hermit, who — here as
there — was his uncle, to whom he confessed everything
and from whom he learned — subject to certain variations
— the story of the Graal in full.
When he is heard of next in the poem, the chance
of war had brought Parsifal in collision with Gawain,
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The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
and they failed to recognise each other until the latter
suffered defeat. The victor was restored in this manner
to the court of King Arthur, passing henceforth to and
fro between that world and the more external world
of adventure. To the court on a certain occasion, with
no preface or warning, there again came Kundrie, sor-
ceress and messenger, carrying the news of Parsifal's
election to the Holy Kingdom of the Graal. Thereat
he rose to his feet and recited the secret story of the
great Palladium, as he had learned it from the lips of
the hermit ; he told how none could attain it unless
he were called thereto ; and in virtue of that calling, in
his own case, he took leave of the chivalry for ever.
He reached the Consecrated Castle, beheld the Hallows
therein, and asked the necessary question, to the king's
healing and the joy of those who were delivered from
the thrallj of his long suffering.
I have left out of this consideration all reference to
Gawain, who occupies a third part of the whole story,
and whose marriage is celebrated therein. He undertook
the Quest of the Graal, and though much followed there-
upon in the matter of high adventure he did not attain
the term. To say this is to indicate in one word an
important point of difference between this text and the
stories which have been studied already. There are
other variations, but I will mention one of them only,
that I may have done with this extraneous matter ; it
concerns the character of Gawain, which is one of knightly
heroism and all manner of courtesy and good conduct.
Wolfram knew nothing apparently of that later fashion
of calumny which was set by the Romance of Lancelot.
The reader is now in a position to understand how far
this summary corresponds with the general outline of Chre-
tien and with the brief quest in the Didot Perceval. He
will also trace the salient analogies with the Welsh Peredur,
and, in a lesser degree, with the English Syr Percyvelle.
In fine, he will see that so far as the schedule reaches, it
has no correspondence in adventure with the Longer Prose
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Perceval, which is the second part only of the knightly
Quest. I have mentioned, however, that the last text
has vague reminiscences of a source which may have been
that of Wolfram, and the two romances converge in the
path of their greatest divergence from other texts. We
have now to consider the points of distinction in the
Parsifal — which are a much more serious question — and
I shall do so under three subdivisions, the first of which
will deal with the romantic episodes, the second with
the Graal itself, including its concomitants in symbolism,
and the third with the source of Wolfram, thus leading
up to the considerations of my next section.
A morganatic union was contracted by the father of
Parsifal, prior to his marriage with Herzeleide, as one
consequence of a journey eastward in search of adventure.
He was the means of salvation to a heathen Queen
Belakane, whose throne he shared for a period, and
although no rite of wedlock is mentioned, she is described
as his wife invariably. The inference is that this union
was not one which the Church would recognise ; but
Gamuret is not exculpated, because it is quite clear that
he had every opportunity to convert her and to lay the
Christian religion like a yoke on the neck of her king-
dom. He would be, therefore, responsible for not making
the attempt, an episode which does not correspond to a
very high sense of honour, while his subsequent marriage
— which is not challenged by the poet — would be thought
little less than disgraceful if the hypothesis of scholarship
had not allocated the poem of Wolfram to so high an
ethical level. The fruit of the first union was the pagan
prince Feirfeis, who, being born in the East under such
circumstances, is harlequined — that is to say, is repre-
sented as half black and half white, to indicate his dual
origin. The death of Gamuret was the result of a second
visit to the East. He heard that the King of Bagdad
was beset by the princes of Babylon, and having served
him in his youth he was impelled to go forth to his
rescue. In one of the ensuing battles he took off his
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helmet and laid it down for a few moments on account
of the heat. A pagan knight poured thereon the blood
of a he-goat, and that which was previously like diamond
in its hardness became soft as sponge. The result was
that the King of Alexandria cut with his spear through
the helmet and penetrated the brain.
I have mentioned here the first point of distinction
between the more narrative part of the poem and the
other quests of Perceval ; the second concerns Kundrie,
who acts as the messenger of the Graal. She is described
as faithful and true, possessing all knowledge — according
to the institutes of the period — and speaking all tongues.
But she was repellent in appearance beyond the physical
issues of Nature, as a combination indeed of gruesome
symbolic animals. She was a sorceress also, as we have
seen, though this is perhaps a technical description of the
period, expressing only the sense of her extraordinary
knowledge. She is not, however, to be identified with
the evil side of the powers of Avalon, concerning which
we hear so much in the Lancelot and later Merlin texts,
nor is she exactly a fay woman — that is to say, the
Daughter of a School of Magic — as conceived by the
French romancers, since she does not practise magic or
weave enchantments. Her impeachment of Parsifal at
the Court of King Arthur turned wholly on his failure
at the Graal, and was interspersed with prophecy which
future events made void. I must say that her discourse
reads only as the raving of one distracted, and that by
which she was distracted was the sorrow in the House of
the Graal. As Parsifal might have disarmed her by the
simplest of all explanations — being that which he gave
subsequently to the Round Table itself — and as thus he
had at least his personal justification reposing in his own
heart — it is curious, and particular to the story, that he
should take her reproaches so deeply into his inward
nature that he held himself shamed almost irretrievably,
though the court did not so hold him. The effect was
greater than this, for it hardened his heart against God
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and converted one who had never been ardent in faith,
who had never so far experienced a touch of Divine
Grace, into an utterer of open blasphemy. Other stories
say that he had forgotten God, but in Wolfram he
remembers and rebels.
The Parsifal does not give us an intelligible history of
Kundrie ; it does not explain why the messenger of the
Graal was or had become unlovely ; or why it connects,
however remotely, that sacred object with one whom it
terms a sorceress. We only see that she comes and goes
as she pleases, or is thereby commissioned, in and about
the Holy House : she carries the palliatives administered
to the wounded King to a place where they become
available for Gawain, and she brings the food of the
Graal to Parsifal's cousin, Sigune.
The intervention of the magician Klingsor in the
story leaves us also in doubt as to what he represents
in the scheme. He came of the race of Virgil — whom
mediaeval tradition presents as a potent enchanter — and
was originally a duke of noble life till he was en-
snared by unholy passion, for which he was heavily
visited, being deprived of the instruments of passion.
Those who know anything of occult traditions will be
aware that this affliction would have been an almost in-
superable barrier to his success in magic, but Wolfram,
who knew only by hearsay, and then at a very far dis-
tance, says that he was made a magician by his maiming,
meaning that he visited the secret city of Persida, the
birthplace of magic — on its averse side apparently — and
received initiation in full, so that he could work all
wonders. He erected Chateau Merveil, which is a sort of
contradiction, in terms of diabolism, to the Castle of the
Holy Graal, as his own life is an analogy by travesty
of that of the King of the Graal, who had also sinned in
his senses, at least by the desire of his heart. Chateau
Merveil, however, seems to lack intention, for the magic
which built it was not proof against the personal bravery
of Gawain, who put an end to the enchantments and
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became the lord of the fortress. It should be added that
Klingsor himself does not appear in the poem, so that
he is a king in hiding.
I have little cause to delay over the history of Feirfeis,
the brother of Parsifal, who came with a great host west-
ward in search of chivalry and his father, only to learn
that the latter was dead when he and Parsifal had nearly
slain each other. Feirfeis married before leaving his
native land, but as Wolfram von Eschenbach begins his
knightly epic with one cruel adultery, so he ends it with
another, eclipsing his previous record by uniting Feirfeis,
within the sacred walls — after his baptism — to the pure
and wonderful maiden who through all her virgin days
had carried the Holy Graal. Now, I pray that God may
preserve us from these high ethical values which we have
known under rougher names. To make bad worse,
when the wedded pair proceed on their journey eastward,
the news of his first wife's death was brought to Feirfeis,
which caused him to rejoice in the journey, though it
seems an indecent satisfaction. I have read some weird
criticisms which are designed to depreciate it, but — while
God continues willing — I set my own heart on the
Quest of Galahad. In fine, as regards this marriage the
issue was a son, who received a name the equivalent of
which was 'Jean le pretre — that is to say, Prester John, the
great, legendary, sacerdotal, Christian King of the furthest
East, the rumour concerning whom went forth over
Europe at the end of the twelfth century.
After the union of all the characters of the story — who
are within the sphere of election — at the Castle of the
Graal, which, as in Chretien so here also, is never the
Holy Graal, the poet passes to the history of Lohengrin
— the son of Parsifal and Kondwiramour. He became the
Knight of the Swan, whose legend was transferred by
Wolfram from what is termed the Lorraine epic cycle.
We shall hear further concerning him and the transmission
of the Sacred Talisman to Prester John in the Younger
Titurel of Albrecht von Scharfenberg. Kardeiss, the
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second of Parsifal's twin sons, was crowned in his
infancy as King of those countries which were the more
earthly heritage of his father.
A few matters of lesser importance may be grouped
here together : ( i ) There is an account of the mother of
King Arthur which is the reverse of the other legends ;
it is said that she fled with a clerk who was versed deeply
in magic — one would have thought a reference to Merlin,
who otherwise at least is unknown to Wolfram. Arthur
is said to have pursued them for three years. (2) There
is no Siege Perilous and no reference to Lancelot. (3)
Parsifal is elected to his kingdom by the fiat of the
Graal itself. (4) The mystic question in Wolfram seems
to be the most natural and ineffective of the literature,
its words being : What aileth thee here, mine uncle ? (5)
It is essential that this question should not be prompted,
but Parsifal's uncle on the mother's side gives him the
information in full and so makes void the condition ; yet
Parsifal asks in the end, and all is well with the King.
I pass now to the matter of the Graal itself, to the
Hallows — imputed, or otherwise — connected therewith,
and the subsidiary subjects, in so far as they have not
been treated in the considerations of the second book.
It will clear the important issues in respect of implicits
if I say that in the German cycle there are no secret
words, there is no strange sacerdotal succession, while
the religious side of the mystery is distinct, and so utterly,
from that of the French romances. The Graal is not
a chalice — and much less a chalice containing the Blood
of Christ : it is a stone, but this is not described specifi-
cally when it is first beheld by Parsifal. It is carried on
a green cushion and is laid on a jacinth table over against
the Warden. It is called the crown of all earthly riches,
but that is in respect of its feeding properties, of which
I shall speak presently. It is not termed a stone, which
is the current account regarding it, till the Knight hears
its history from the lips of his uncle Trevrezent. The
names which are then applied to it are Pure and Precious,
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Lapis exilis (literally, Lapis exilix, but this is a scribe's
mistake and is nonsense), and it is also that stone which
causes the phoenix to renew her youth. No man can die
for eight days after he has seen it, and — although this
virtue is forgotten in the case of Titurel, who is de-
scribed as an ancient of days — those who can look on
it daily remain in the appearance of youth for ever. It is
subject, apparently, to a periodical diminution of virtue,
and it is re-charged like a talisman every Good Friday
by the descent of a dove from heaven carrying a Sacred
Host : she deposits it thereon, and so returns whence she
came. It follows that the mystery of the Parsifal is
certainly an Eucharistic mystery, although at a far distance,
seeing that it never communicates supersubstantial bread.
What it does distribute actually we have learned else-
where, for at the supper-table in the Castle it acts as an
inexhaustible larder and superb hotch-pot, furnishing hot
or cold, wild and tame, with the wine-cups of an eternal
tavern. As a peace-offering to the rational understanding,
there is a vague suggestion that the stewards of the
Castle provide the salt, pepper and sauces. Wolfram
von Eschenbach describes this abundance as (#) earthly
delight in the plenary realisation thereof, and (<£) joy
which he is justified in comparing with the glories of
heaven's gold bar. Long researches dispose the heart
towards patience — perhaps because of their weariness ;
let me be satisfied therefore with registering the bare fact
that this story is supposed, by those who know, to be
the high spiritual quest of all, on which authority I am
casting about me for the arch-natural side of an alder-
man's dinner. The writing on the Graal Stone might
well be : esurientes imp/evit bonis. I note also that in
the pageant a stone is put upon a stone, but those who
remember super hanc -petram tedificabo ecclesiam meam may
be asked to desist.
The sacred character of this wonderful object — which
solves for those who are called the whole difficulty of
getting a material living — is explained by the antecedent
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part of its history. It was brought to this earth by a
company of angels, who gave it into the charge of certain
baptized men, the first of whom was Titurel. In the
Northern French cycle the origin of the Sacred Vessel
is explained in a manner which, within its own limits,
is quite intelligible ; it may be almost said to begin in
Nature, though it ends in the Great Mystery. To the
Cup used by Christ at the Last Supper no unusual qualities
attach ; Robert de Borron says that it was mout genfy
but it is only in the sense of an utensil at the period.
This is probably the earliest description which we have, and
it is left by most of the later texts in similar comparative
simplicity. The arch-natural character resided solely in
the content. To sum up, the chalice of the French cycle
began on earth and was taken to heaven, but the history
of the German Hallow is the converse of this ; its origin
is celestial, but in the end it is left on earth. Let it be
remarked in conclusion that there is no reason assigned
for the bringing of the Graal to earth, nor do we hear of
its purpose or nature prior to this event.
The Lesser Hallows of the story have scarcely a title
to the name, as they have no connection with the Passion
of Christ or any other sacred history. The Graal King
was wounded in ordinary warfare by a poisoned spear, and
this was exhibited in the Castle, but not as a memorial
or a symbol of vengeance to come, for the heathen who
smote him died at his hands in the joust. We know
already that the Lance has a prodigal faculty of bleeding,
but it is to no purpose. The Sword seems to be merely
an ordinary weapon of excellent quality and temper ; it
was used by the King before he fell into sickness ; it
is given to Parsifal as a mark of hospitality apparently ;
it will break in one peril, but somehow the poet for-
gets and the event does not come to pass. No Dish is
specified as part of the official procession ; and the two
silver knives, though they have a certain history, for they
were made by the smith Trebuchet, serve only some
dubious purpose in connection with the King's sufferings.
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As regards these, we know that the sin of Amfortas, for
which he has been punished full long and in which he
awaits the help of the mystic question, was a sin of earthly
passion. The Graal is an oracle in Wolfram, as it is in
Robert de Borron, but according to the latter it spoke,
while here it writes only. In this manner it calls maidens
and men from any place in the world to enter its service,
but the maidens it calls openly and the men in secret.
It also appoints the successor of the reigning King and
the wife whom he must take unto himself. With his
exception, the life of celibacy is imposed on all the
chivalry of the Castle. With the women it seems to
have been different, but those who married went out
into the world. The sin of Amfortas, which led to his
grievous wound, was — as I have just said — a sin of
earthly passion, but not apparently of that kind which is
consummated in shame. The Graal had not announced
that this keeper should take a wife, and he had gone
before its judgment by choosing a lady for his service, in
whose honour he went beyond the precincts of his king-
dom in search of knightly deeds. She was the Duchess
Orgeluse, who became subsequently the wife of Gawain.
In accepting the service of Amfortas, as later that of her
future husband, she was pursuing only a mission of
vengeance on one who had destroyed the prince to whom
her love had been dedicated from the first days of desire.
The King of the Graal was abroad on these ventures
when he met in a joust with a heathen, who had come
from the region about the Earthly Paradise with the
ambition of winning the Graal. We have seen that the
unqualified aspirant after the secret knowledge died
in the tourney, but Amfortas went home carrying the
poisoned spear-head in his flesh, and thereafter he abode
as the King in suffering and even in punishment. It
follows that the cause of battle was true and righteous,
but the motive which created the place was, I suppose,
the root of offence, and for that he was bruised grievously.
All the resources of healing were sought in the world of
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Nature and that of magical art : the Graal itself in vain ;
in vain the waters of Paradise ; the blood of the Pelican,
the heart of the Unicorn, that bough which the Sybil
gave to u^Eneas as a palladium against Hades and its
dangers, and the magic herb which springs from the
blood of a dragon — but these too in vain. Finally, the
appeal was referred to the Sacred Talisman by offices of
prayer, and a writing which appeared thereon announced
the condition of healing — to wit, the visit of a knight
who should demand knowledge concerning the woe of
the Castle. It is the only version in which this Mystic
Question is shown to originate from the Graal itself. It
is also the only version in which sin enters the Sanctuary,
and it is therefore important to show that it is a sin of
sense in the lowest degree ; it is rather a transgression of
obedience. There are stated periods in the story for
the increase of the King's suffering, being the close of
the wandering of Saturn, causing frost and snow in
summer on the heights where the kingdom is situated.
The cold is agony to the Keeper, and it is then that the
poisoned spear is used to pierce him again ; it re-opens
the wound, but it keeps him alive, for it draws out the
frost in crystals — which crystals are removed apparently
from the weapon by the silver knives of Trebuchet.
The Castle in Wolfram is supposed to have been
situated on the northern slope of the mountains of
Gothic Spain, while on the southern side, or in Moorish
Spain, was the Castle built by Klingsor — that is to say,
Chateau Merveil, containing the Lit Mervei! of the
other romances. The name allocated to the first was
that of the eminence itself — Mont Salvaage, Salvasch, or
Salvatch. There is no account of the building or of the
incorporation of the chivalry ; but (a) the Graal Knights
are chosen, as we have seen, by the Graal itself as
opportunity offers or circumstances seem to require ; (^)
they may be elected in childhood ; (^) they constitute
an aggressive military order, going sometimes on long
missions ; (^/) they cannot be regarded as a perfect nor
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yet as an invincible chivalry, for one of them is over-
thrown by Parsifal in combat, when on his quest of the
Castle ; and here, as in other respects (i) they recall and
are practically identified by Wolfram with the Knights
Templars, having also the same order name. Scholars
who have investigated this part of the subject trace a
distinct connection between the House of Anjou and the
Graal Brotherhood ; it should be added that the line-
age of Anjou is the subject of continual reference in
Wolfram's poem, and Parsifal is of that legitimacy.
At the beginning of his chronicle Wolfram testifies to
a single prototype from which alone he drew ; he cites its
authority continually in the course of his poem ; in one
place he gives a very full account of it ; and he testi-
fies concerning it at the end. He knew otherwise of
Chretien's version, but he suggests that it was the wrong
story, with which the fountain-head might be reasonably
indignant. The authentic text was the work of Guiot
de Provence, and from that region it was brought into
the German fatherland. It was not invented by Guiot,
but was found by him under circumstances the account
of which is in one respect a little out of harmony with
itself. It lay rejected or forgotten in the city of Toledo,
and being in the Arabic tongue, the first task of Guiot
was to learn that language. This he accomplished by
the sacramental grace of baptism and the holy illumi-
nation of faith. Without these aids to interpre-
tation the tale would have remained in concealment,
for, according to its own testimony, no pagan talents
could have expressed the great mystery which reposes
in the Graal. This is so far clear, but the difficulty is
that it was written in the first place by one who ranks
as a heathen for Wolfram — that is to say, one who on
the father's side was a worshipper of idols, though on the
mother's, apparently, of the royal line of Solomon. This
was in the days which preceded Christ, and the Jew was
the first in this world who ever spoke of the Graal.
That which enabled him to do so was his gift of reading
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the stars, wherein he saw wondrous secrets, for the story
of the Graal was written in a celestial galaxy. On this
basis the scribe wrote more especially concerning the
descent of angels to earth carrying the sacred object and
concerning certain baptized men who were placed in
charge thereof. This being the record attributed to a
Jew before the first dispensation had suffered super-
session, no one will be surprised to learn that his name
was Flegetanis ; but here ends the account concerning him.
Guiot may have been, reasonably or not, dissatisfied with
the transcript from the starry heavens, but he confesses
only to anxiety about the identity of those who had been
appointed the wardens, and after consulting old Latin
works, he went in quest of them through France, Britain
and Ireland, but did not attain what he wanted until he
arrived in Anjou, where he found the story of the
Keepers faithfully and truly registered — that is to say,
concerning Titurel, Frimutel and Amfortas. It is clear
therefore that the Jew of Toledo told the early history
of the Graal but gave no version of the Quest. I deduce
from these data two conclusions, one of which is specu-
lative and personal to myself at the moment : (a) The
appeal of Guiot, like all the other romancers, is to
an antecedent authority and, like some of them, to a
primordial text ; (b) the story of Flegetanis has suffered
what is termed contamination by the introduction of
extraneous matter, being all that which was not included
in the record of the starry heavens, for which reason I
set down as a tolerable presumption that neither Guiot
nor Wolfram told the true story, however ample the
evidence on which the version of Chretien was con-
demned. I suppose that I shall be accused of fooling or
alternatively of preternatural gravity, but I mention these
matters because of what will be said hereafter concerning
a lost book of the Graal. Three points remain to be
mentioned here: (i) Guiot seems to have cautioned
those who reproduced his story to hide the chief matters
until the end thereof, and this is cited by Wolfram,
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though it can be said scarcely that he carried out the
injunction ; (2) if Wolfram followed Guiot, and him
only, it seems certain that Guiot himself recounted
several adventures to which his translator alludes merely
in passing; however, they do not concern us; (3) the
authority of Guiot, though often held to be an invention
of Wolfram to conceal his indebtedness to Chretien, has
of late years been demonstrated.
The consideration of the Graal as a stone belongs to a
later book of my experiment, but that the coming event
may cast its shadow on these particular pages, I will add
here a few subjects of reflection ; they will prepare the
ground for those who have ears to hear me, even if they
are as a rock of offence to some others who are impatient
of ways in thought which they have not sought to enter.
(A) For Lapis exilis — in any higher sense — I should read
only Lapis angularis, but this is put forward rather by
way of interpretation than of alternative or amendment.
We have seen that the term exilis is the speculative con-
struction of a nonsensical word, and as such it does not
help towards understanding ; if there were authority to
support it, one would recall that passage in Wolfram's
Quest which says that in the hands of her who was
qualified by grace to carry it, the Graal was a light
burden, but it was heavy beyond endurance for those
who were unworthy. In this respect it was like the
Liber exilis, which was held by the hermit of the Book
of the Holy Graal in the hollow of his hand, but this
unrolled in his rendering till it grew to be a goodly
folio. (5) Whosoever says Lapis angularis in this con-
nection should add super hanc petram. (C) It is true
also that he who wrote Lapis exilis — if indeed he wrote
it — implied as its complement : nobis post hoc exilium
ostende. (D) This stone is the head of the corner and
the key of the Royal Arch. (£) The Stone which tinges
is also the Stone which burns ; if not, the Phoenix would
fail of rebirth. (F) There is another form of the Graal
Mystery in which men ask for Bread and are given a Stone,
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but this is Lapis exilii — a healing nutriment, and it is
designed to restore the Banished Prince on his return
home. (G) It can be well understood that the stars over
the Graal speak in a strange language. (//) I rule there-
fore that much remains to be said for the clear sight of
that Son of Israel and Paganism who found the Graal-
record in a galaxy of stars, and though the method by
which that record is decoded will not be found in the
course of a day's reading at any observatory, I am quite
sure that the stars still tell the same story, that it is also
the true story, which owes nothing to the Chronicles
of Anjou. (/) When the Jew of Toledo read in the great
sky, as in a glass of vision, it does not mean that he
arranged the fixed lights into conventional forms, but that
he divined as a devout astronomer. (J) The Mystery
which the stars expressed is that by which, in the last con-
sideration, all the material planets are themselves ruled.
Let those who will chide me on the ground that .1
" sit and play with similes," but this is the kind of
symbolism which Guiot de Provence might have brought
over from the place which he terms Toledo, and this the
imputed Jew of that city might have read in the starry
heavens. In the chronicles of Anjou, or their substi-
tutes, Guiot might have found the remanents of the Bowl
of Plenty and even some far-away fable concerning a
certain Stone of which Templar initiation could speak to
the higher members of that Order of Chivalry ; but the
two notions do not stand even in the remote relation
which subsists between Aleph and Tau.
Lastly, and that I may act on myself as a moderator,
if there or here I should seem to have suggested that an
enthusiasm has exaggerated the Parsifal, I have spoken of
things as they appear on the surface and as they have been
understood thereon by those who have preceded me. We
shall see in its place whether there is another sense, and
the readers to whom I appeal may have marked enough
in my bare summary of the text to conclude that there is.
I place it at the moment only as a tolerable inference.
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II
GLEANINGS CONCERNING THE LOST QUEST
OF GUIOT DE PROVENCE
Astronomers have recognised in the past the in-
fluence of certain planets prior to their discovery, and
subsequently this has verified their prescience. In like
manner, the influence of that French poem which is
ascribed to the Provencal Guiot is discernible after
several modes in the German cycle, and the fact is no
less important, even if the providence of books should
not in fine lead us to the discovery of the missing text.
It is at present a lost planet which will not " swim into
our ken." I think that there are difficulties in Wolfram's
references to the poem which may be classed as almost
insuperable by persons who are unacquainted with the
literature of hidden traditions : to these they are the
kind of difficulties which — as Newman once said in
another connection — do not make one doubt. At the
same time the legend of the lost story occupies a position
in the cycles which, without being in any way abnormal,
is in several respects remarkable. In the past, as I have
said, there was one phase of criticism which regarded
the whole crux as nothing more than the invention of
Wolfram to conceal the real fact that he borrowed from
Chretien. Being the finding of certain German scholars
concerning the work of their countryman, it was entitled
to a tempered respect antecedently, but it was at no time
tolerable in its pretension and has been since made void.
Wolfram lays claim to nothing so little as origination,
and I know not why his literary vanity should have been
consoled better by a false than a true ascription in respect
of his source, more especially as in either case he would
be confessing to a French poet. The suggestion, in fine,
would account only for a part of the field which he
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covered, as we know that Chretien fell far short of
completing his task.
The bare facts of the existence of Guiot and his poem
were determined, so far as I am aware, for the first time,
and, as it is thought, indubitably, by the publication of
the Saone de Nausay in 1902. It has attracted little atten-
tion, but the fact of its existence and the important evi-
dence which it offers to our particular subject have been at
least stated in England. It is an exceedingly curious text,
and in respect of Graal matters it has weird and scoriated
reflections of the Joseph legend. But one reference to
his son as the first consecrated bishop indicates that cycle
of French texts into which it would fall if there were
occasion to class it. The Graal is represented in the
light of a general healing vessel, which we know other-
wise to be in a sporadic sense its office, though it could
do nothing within the charmed circle of its own sanctuary
for those who belonged thereto.
Much about the time that this poem was put at the
disposition more especially of German scholarship, there
was an attempt in the same country to show that the
reputed Provencal Guiot was a priest of the Church in
Britain, and that he died Bishop of Durham. I do not
know how this opinion may have impressed those who
are most qualified to judge, but at least in France and
England it was passed over in complete silence.
The evidences and speculations with which we have
been just dealing — while, on the one hand, they satisfy
us regarding the existence of Guiot and the poem
connected with his name, and, on the other, create some
bare and tentative presumption regarding his identity —
are of no material assistance in respect of the problems
which are raised by his work as it is reflected in the Quest
of Wolfram. If we accept the Durham hypothesis of Dr.
Paul Hagan it follows not only that Guiot de Provence no
doubt anteceded Chretien de Troyes, but — so doing — that
he was the first recorded writer who told the history of
the Graal, regarded as a Christian Hallow, and the Quest
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thereof. If we set aside this hypothesis, I suppose that
it is an open question as to the succession of the two
poets in time, and whether one derived from another or
both from a common source. There is a disposition
— if speaking of it be worth while, when the subject is
so precarious — to regard Guiot as first in the point
of time. We know only that both poets appealed to
a source, and that, on the surface at least, the appeals
are exclusive mutually. To his authority Wolfram
seems to refer as if he were an old writer, but in
ascriptions of this kind the years tend to dissolve
rather rapidly into generations. If, however, we assign
the superior antiquity to Guiot, it may be thought not
unreasonably that the alleged source of Chretien — the
mellor conte qui sou contes en court roial — was actually the
Quest of the Provengal. Textual scholarship, however,
which is much the best judge in these matters, is tempted,
I believe, to conclude that it was not a quest at all.
On the other hand, except for personal predispositions
— to one of which I have confessed — there is little to
warrant the supposition that it was a pious local legend,
like that which was produced at Fecamp, because in
Chretien, as in Guiot, the Graal Hallows are not relics
of the Passion. There is an inclination at the present
day to account for Chretien's vagueness regarding his
central sacred or talismanic object by assuming that he
had heard only vaguely concerning it on his own part ;
that he introduced it in an arbitrary manner ; and that it
was quite purposeless in his Quest. I do not think that
this will bear examination, more especially in the light
of Guiot, who, as we have seen, counselled those who
followed him to hide the tale at the beginning till it
was unfolded gradually in its narration. In accordance
with this, Wolfram is not much more explanatory at
the beginning than his antecedent in Northern France,
though the latter falls short at the point where the Ger-
man poet himself begins to develop — that is to say, in
the interview between Perceval and his hermit uncle.
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However this may be, it is most important to note (a) the
absence of the Passion-relics in both poets, and (£) the
absence of the feeding qualities of the Graal in Chretien,
thus, in my opinion, (<:) disposing of any theory that
he derived from Guiot, supposing that these elements
were present in Guiot's text. On this last point, as the
evidences which can be extracted from Wolfram leave
much to be desired in respect of fulness, the question
remains open. While he states in the first place that he
knows of no other witness, the third book seems to speak
in the plural of those who told the story before him and,
at the same time, having regard to his judgment con-
cerning Chretien, he can scarcely have held that it was
recited to any purpose by him. The Provencal, on the
German's authority, gave it to the very end — which,
I suppose, means to the winning of the Graal by Parsifal.
Yet it is certain on the text only that he is responsible
for (i) The Arabian source of the Graal story; (2) the
names of its appointed Keepers; (3) the history of
Gawain, or at least some part thereof; and (4) the
kinship of Parsifal and Sigune. It is difficult in several
respects to follow Guiot as he is represented by Wolfram
solely, though additamenta gathered from later sources lie
under the suspicion of false and invented ascriptions.
The Graal itself is a case in point ; there is a later report
that it was originally a stone in the crown of Lucifer,
which I do not find in the Parsifal. Assuming that this
account was derived from Guiot, one is inclined to
speculate whether the feeding properties of the talismanic
object could have been a part of his scheme, as the
two notions are quite foreign to each other, and yet
the Dish of Plenty looms so largely in Wolfram that it
is difficult to predicate its absence in his palmary source.
At the same time, though Wolfram acknowledged, as
I have said, no other exemplar, he did adopt extrinsic
materials, as, for example, the legend of Lohengrin from
the Lorraine epic cycle. To increase the confusion,
the stone is identified in Parsifal with the fabulous or
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symbolic Phoenix, and thus recalls the Phenicite Stone
of Dioscorides. In this connection, it has not been noticed
that one of the myths incorporated by the Book of
the Holy Graal concerns a bird similar to the Phoenix, but
more extravagantly described. After laying her eggs this
bird is said to make use of a stone called Piratite, found
in the valley of Hebron, the property of which is to burn
anything that rubs it, and it is supposed to consume the
bird. It is not the Lapis Judaicus or Thecolithos^ but
apparently the Black Pyrites, which, according to Pliny,
burns the hand when touched. The same fable says
that the name given to the bird is Serpelion, but hereto
I find no reference. Neither on this nor on another
consideration can Wolfram's historical account of the
Graal be held to explain its imputed sacred character, and
it is not surprising that no spiritual exaltation seems to
follow its presence. If the vague story does not imply
the later legend of the Crown of Lucifer, there is no
explanation of its origin or of its supposed custody by
the fallen angels of the air, though part at least of this
story is repudiated afterwards by the person who relates
it to Parsifal. Why it was sent by God, what purpose
was served by its presence on earth, in what sense the
stone which consumes the Phoenix is identical with the
talisman which supplies inexhaustible delicacies ready
dressed and cooked at a banquet — these things remain
a mystery, and if any explanation were possible on the
assumption of a subsurface sense, the presentation would
remain and is the worst form of the legend on the official
and extant side.
Fortunately, its mere presentation disposes of the
suggestion that Guiot was heretical in his tendencies.
This has arisen in part out of the Templar element,
which is so obvious in the Parsifal, and for the rest out of
the Albigensian implications, which may be thought to
underlie at the period any text connected, directly or
otherwise, with the South of France. We have seen
that the charge against Wolfram is without foundation,
401 2 c
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and utterly. There is no Mass of the Graal in the
Parsifal, no priestly character in the Wardens, no kind
of competition with Church claims, no interference with
ecclesiastical matters. If it be said that the arch-con-
secrated Host brought down from Heaven to renew the
virtues of the Graal constitutes a questionable element,
that must depend upon the general context, and in the
light of this it raises no difficulty. There is a significant
absence of suggestion that souls are sustained through
the Graal from a superior channel of grace than can
be claimed by the official Church, for on the surface sense
of the text it is the bodies of the confraternity which,
owing to the Graal and its annual renewal, were fed by the
Host, while the recipients, including the Keepers, were not
preserved thereby in a catholic state of sanctity. This is
folly and all confusion, but it is not heresy by intention ;
it is a muddled thesis concerning a grotesque object, of
all things least sacred in the world of imaginative writing ;
it is worse than the Fecamp reliquary as compared with
other legends of Joseph of Arimathasa ; in a word, it is
on a due and just level with the moral elevation which is
ascribed spuriously to the epic. The story of Perceval was
never written at all till the task was undertaken by the
unknown author of the Longer Prose Perceval, and so far
as we can trace the hand of Guiot in Wolfram, those so-
called Chronicles of Anjou must have taken him far from
the term.
Varied and considerable learning is ascribed to Guiot
de Provence, and, among many indirect evidences, this
is suggested by the circumstances under which, in his
own turn, he claims to have derived the fundamental
part of his story. We know that his alleged source was
written in the Arabic tongue ; that the recipient inprimis^m
far pre-Christian days, was a Jew who on one side of his
parentage was also of pagan stock ; and that in fine the
old and old chronicle was lying neglected and forgotten
among the undemonstrable archives of Toledo. We have
seen further that above this story on earth there was an
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eternal story in- heaven, as the last possible antecedent of
all records, and it was therein that the Jew read, while
the beating of his own pulses alone throbbed in the silent
spaces. But as it is desirable to give a certain local touch
to these abstruse matters, I have mentioned that the Jew's
name was Flegetanis,to increase the verisimilitude of which
we may memorise the fact that he wrote in Arabic rather
than m Hebrew. The baths of disillusion are colder than
those of Apollo, and from all — if any there be — who can
dream that these things were possible individually before,
or collectively after, the manifested Light of the World,
we may well cry with devotion our Libera nos, Domine.
The fact which remains is that Flegetanis read in the
starry heavens, and that in the Book of the Holy Graal
a person of this name, or nearly, was the mother of
Celidoine, who was born under such high stellar auspices
and himself divined by the stars. In such strange ways
does one of the latest histories seem to draw from
another which is earliest by the high imputation of things ;
only these two texts contain the Celtic name in question,
and these only produce from their hidden source in
common the myth which exceeds explication concerning
the Phoenix bird and the ardent stone. It is in connections
of this kind that one occasionally obtains, out of all
expectation, a certain extrinsic light. The suggestion
that, at however far a distance, there may have been
the hand of Jewry in the literature of the Holy Graal
might well be a source of scandal. But the Provengal
Guiot was, as we have seen, a man of curious learning,
and by a somewhat precarious induction it is supposed
that he was a student at Toledo in those days when the
relations between Southern France and Northern Spain
may be described as intimate. Whatever be the merits
or otherwise of this supposition, it is certain that in one
curious respect he gives evidence of an acquaintance
with the secret ways of Israel. One of the interminable
discourses comprised in the collection of the Zohar states
that in the whole extent of the heavens, the circumference
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of which surrounds the world, there are figures and there
are signs by means of which the deepest mysteries may be
discovered. These figures are formed by galaxies and con-
stellations of stars, which are for the sage a subject of con-
templation and a source of mysterious delights. The
simple indication in the great canon of the Kabalah is the
root-matter of all Hebrew astrology, and the reader who
is sufficiently curious may consult on the whole subject
certain Unheard-of Curiosities collected by James Gaffarel,
where he will find the celestial constellations expressed by
Hebrew characters and the celestial Hebrew alphabet.
It follows that all mysteries resident in the letters and
their combinations would be indubitably in the starry
heavens, and the mysterious inspiration which, according to
Guiot's story, fell on the Jew of Toledo represents a mode
of divination which in that place was well known and in
practice at that period. It will, I hope, be understood
that nothing follows from this fact except that by a
curious instance I have illustrated the curious learning
which must have been possessed indubitably by the
Proven9al poet.
The considerations of this section are far indeed from
our term, but, as seen already, something remains to be
said, when the pageant draws to its close, concerning the
second sense of Guiot and his German reflection.
Ill
SIDELIGHTS FROM THE SPANISH AND
PORTUGUESE QUESTS
The German cycle of the Holy Graal owes nothing to
the romances of Merlin, and it embodies no attempt to
incorporate Arthurian history, except in so far as this is in
close consanguinity with its own purpose. A few frag-
ments make it evident that archaic Proven9al literature
once included some translation of Merlin, but whether it
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exceeded the point reached by the poem of Robert de
Borron or its prose rendering there is no evidence to
show. Speaking antecedently, from the great body of
romance which was produced in Spain, we might have
expected many reflections therein, but we know only
(a) of simple allusions scattered through the interminable
books of chivalry, and (b) of three printed texts, two of
which I have cited by a bare allusion already. El baladro
del sabio Merlin is in substance a rendering of the Huth
manuscript, and all that we have heard concerning it has
been given us by Gaston Paris. The second text is Merlin
y demanda del Santo Grial, so that the Quest — and it is
the Great Quest — did enter the Peninsula. I do not know
under whose eyes it has fallen in these places of the
world, and it is only from sparse references in German
authors that I have been able to certify even to this
extent. There is, however, La Demanda del santo Grial,
which appeared at Toledo in 1515, of which I shall
speak in the Appendix.
Portugal had also its solitary version of the Galahad
Quest, and probably it is much more important than that
which we meet with in Spain, for it has been found to
contain the missing final part of the Huth Merlin. Some
years ago an attempt was made to re-edit it, not from
the printed version, but from a Viennese manuscript. I
cannot trace that the task was ever completed, and in so
far as the text is available in this fragmentary manner,
the variations from the normal versions of the Quest,
though interesting to textual scholars, are not important
to us. The Viennese manuscript seems to have included
also some form of the Morte d Arthur. It may be termed
composite in character, as it introduces matter which
seems extraneous to the Quest. It is also in another
key ; there is even a wooing of Galahad ; Palamades
reappears therein ; so also does Tristram. As a note in
fine on the whole subject, it should be said that, all com-
munications notwithstanding between Southern France and
Spain and all Spanish-Oriental allusions reflected into the
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Parsifal of Wolfram from the Quest of Guiot, the rumour
of the Graal which reached the Peninsula was of Galahad
rather than another. The Tcmplcisin, the Stone, the
hierarchy of fallen angels, have no part therein. And
so, as I have just hinted, there is a certain intellectual
consolation in knowing that the Quest of Galahad did
pass into the life of Spanish romantic chivalry. One
would have thought that it must have had a great vogue
where the sons and daughters of desire accepted so
easily in their hearts some phase at least of desire in the
life of devotion. This, of course, was not to be expected
at the period of its production, but in that much later
century when the literature of chivalry itself began to
assume the official draperies of religion. The new aspect
was unfortunately at once conventional and extravagant,
and perhaps the Quest was too spiritual in the tran-
scendental degree for it to be quite within the compass of
the Iberian mind. The tendency which produced The
Book of Celestial Chivalry in the middle of the sixteenth
century originated much earlier, and that which made
Esplandian or Don Belianis of Greece as if it were peers
of Christ, when Christ became a knight-errant, had long
before registered the vocation of Galahad as a thing un-
realisable. Whether the Quest was known to Cervantes
is interesting at once and insoluble, for it did not enter
into the catalogue of Don Quixote's library, either for
praise or blame. However this may be, those who are
acquainted with the Book of Celestial Chivalry and kindred
productions will be in a position to appreciate the kind
of inhibition which seems to have befallen the flights of
romance when they sought to body forth the aspirations and
emotions towards things unseen. It is a condition which is
the more curious when we remember the Ascent of Mount
Carmel) the Dark Night of the Soul and all that which is
told us of worlds too seldom realised by Peter de Avila
and Molinos. In some of the books which are attributed,
falsely enough, to Raymond Lully — but for which a
Spanish source can perhaps be predicated reasonably — and
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in the theosophical quests and ventures through the
tangled skein of the Zohar, there is more of the true spirit
of romance than in all Spanish tales of chivalry, if we set
aside those of Amadis and Palmerin. All that follows
thereafter shows only that there were other and drearier
enchantments than those of Logres.
The claims of this sub-section cannot be regarded as
high in respect of sidelights, but seeing that my least
concern of all is to establish an exhaustive scheme of
texts, it follows that I must confess to some other motive
for its inclusion, restricted as in space it is. My purpose
is therefore to show that to none of the romance coun-
tries— France excepted — did the cycle of Perceval ap-
peal, and, I believe, for another cause than the mere
fact that the later Merlin, the Lancelot, the Quest of Gala-
had were in prose, while some of the Perceval stories
were cast in verse, which may have offered a difficulty.
Even if the fact were due to the accidents of that which
was most available, I hold it a felicitous accident that
only Seville produced a quest of Perceval.
IV
THE CROWN OF ALL AD7ENTURES
The implicit, I must suppose, of each succeeding quest
was that the earlier singer of le meilleur conte qui soit conte
en cour royale had told the wrong story, and that some
far higher flight of pure romance must justify the material
which came into the hands of each. The most interesting
contrasted instance is the Longer Prose Perceval put for-
ward as an alternative to the Quest of Galahad, as if by
one who cleaved to the old tradition concerning the hero
of the achievement and yet had every intention of pro-
fiting by the high light of sanctity which overshone the
symbol of Galahad. The least comprehensible contrasted
instance is the competition instituted in the name of
Gawain by Heinrich von dem Turlin in his poem of Diu
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Crone. The ambition seems so impossible after the Parsifal
of Wolfram, but that poem was not appreciated — on
account of its setting chiefly — by the general profession
of minstrelsy. The instance further was, in its way, a
certain justification of Chretien, who was followed in
several respects and often appealed to by Heinrich. Diu
Crfine owes something also to the lost poem of Guiot, but
whether by derivation through Wolfram or in a more
direct manner is uncertain. That it justifies any claim to
existence I do not think, but this notwithstanding it is a
very curious romance, so much under the veils of enchant-
ment that the whole action seems transferred into a land
of faerie, while the gifts and dotations which are offered
to the elect hero might have made any quest of the Graal
almost a work of superfluity on his part. In place of the
Castle of Maidens there is pictured a wandering island of
the sea wherein dwell virgins only, and the queen of this
wonderful people, exercising a royal privilege, offers the
possession of herself in marriage and the rule of her
kingdom to Gawain as her chosen knight ; yet if this be
incompatible with his purpose, she will tolerate their part-
ing at need and will bestow upon him, as her token of
goodwill, an elixir of unfading youth. The hero exercises
his admitted power of choice in favour of the second
alternative, and with good reason probably, since the
island was doubtless one of those dreaming places where
a thousand years are even as a single day, and after a
moon of sorcery he might have issued bearing on his
shoulders an age past all renewing, even by the Holy
Graal.
The keynote of the story is in one sense the dis-
qualification of Perceval, who — because he had failed once
—had forfeited his vocation forever. The opportunity
is transferred to Gawain, and Heinrich is indebted to
Chretien for the substance of those inventions by which
he is covenanted to enter on the Quest of the Holy
Graal. We, on the other hand, may be indebted to his
own imagination for the aids that the powers of Fairyland
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The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
combine to provide by means of telesmas and other
wonder-working objects which safeguard the way of the
Quest. Seeing that the failure of Perceval to ask the all-
important question is held insufficient as a warning in the
case of Gawain, when he seeks to follow in his footsteps,
he is reinforced by a particular caution at the Castle of
Wonders. What he receives is indeed a dual counsel :
he is not only to ask and to learn, but, in order that he
may behold the Graal, he is urged to abstain at the table
from all refreshment in wine. The maiden who proffers
this advice proves to be her who carries the Sacred Vessel
in the pageant at the Castle thereof. The analogy by
opposition hereto is Gautier's story of the trick played
upon Perceval by the Daughter of the Fisher King when
she carries off the stag's head and brachet to punish
Perceval for not asking the question.
We have had full opportunity to appreciate Gawain's
share in the great adventurous experiment within the
horizon of Wolfram's poem ; we have seen also in
Chretien how and why, as a part of his own vindication,
he set forth to seek the Bleeding Lance, but the quest
proved a failure. Except the promiscuous proposal and
fleeting undertaking in the Galahad Quest, Gawain does
not figure as a knight in search of the Graal in the French
romances till we come to the period of the Longer Prose
Perceval. Even in Gautier the fullest account of his visit
to the Castle of Hallows is apart from all notion of
intention, as he is simply a gallant of the period in
attendance on Guinevere, who herself is awaiting the
return of King Arthur after the reduction of Castle
Orguellous. On the other hand, Heinrich's Diu Crone
pictures him expressly, and as if in real earnest, seeking to
achieve the Graal, enduring also many adventures because
of it. After the poem of Wolfram, his success does not
seem to improve upon his failure in the other stories ; it
is by way of superfluity, and it may be said almost that
Heinrich takes him for another, as he was also hailed
for a moment in Gautier's poem.
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In the course of his progress Gawain arrived at a boun-
tiful and smiling land, as if it were the precincts of an
earthly paradise, and on the further borders thereof he
beheld a vast fiery sword keeping the entrance to a
fortress with walls translucent as glass. I do not know,
because it is difficult always to adjudicate in his case, why
he should have regarded this wonder in the light of an
evil omen, but this is how it impressed him, and he missed
perhaps one among the greatest adventures when he
retired so incontinently — whether it was a way of entrance
into the higher Eden or into the fascination of a false
paradise. Great as are the accomplished enterprises of
Graal literature, I think that greater still are some of those
which therein are hinted only, remaining unachieved or
unrecorded. It seems clear that this fortress, at no inde-
finite distance from the Graal Castle, is that which Perceval
would have entered in Gerbert's poem, and his incontinent
eagerness contrasts favourably with the terror and the
flight of Gawain. The Knight continued to traverse a land
flowing with milk and honey, and he rode for yet twelve
days, when he came upon Lancelot andCalogreant — another
companion of the Round Table— both in a manner on the
Quest. So these three shadows of those who should
finish the experiment in utter reality came at last to their
bourne. It may have been a region of sorcery which
encompassed that abode, which we know to have been the
House of the Dead, but it was assuredly like the inter-
mediate region between the life of this world and the life
everlasting. There are few things in literature which
savour so strangely of that visionary astral region, full
of great simulations and full of false joy, which does
not attempt to conceal the bitter heart of sorrow. The
knightly company depicted on the meadow without the
burg, performing evolutions in pastime, was like the
" midnight host of spectres pale " which " beleaguered the
walls of Prague." But the places of death are not
places of silence ; the burg itself had a noisy throng
within it, and so had the castle or palace — that Ghost's
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The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
House and House of the Dead alive. The companions
were brought under safe guidance into the hall in
chief, which was like the Kabalistic sphere of Venus — a
pomp of external splendour, heavy with the crushed-out
fragrance of heaped roses — as some mansion in an
eastern fairyland. In the Hall of Roses there was seated
the host who was to receive them — another patient
sufferer of the ages, diverted in his pitiful weariness by
youths playing chess at his feet. That game is a feature
which in one or another form is inevitable in all the stories
till the highest of the high quests intervenes and makes
void so many of the old elements. It is played elsewhere
by pieces having self-moving powers, but here it is played
by the dead amidst shadowy sport and raillery ; betwixt
the one and the other there is perhaps suggested some
vaguely mystic side of the old war in mimicry.
The questing knights had not been received to no pur-
pose ; there was a work which they were required to
perform, supposing that they were properly prepared ;
for the unspelling quest is followed even to the grave.
Lord or prince of the Castle, it is not said till the close
whether the host is old or young ; he is not termed the
Rich Fisher and his genealogy is unknown. So also are
most antecedents of the Hallows. The guests were
treated royally and were entertained at a banquet, but
at that time the Master of the House neither ate nor
drank. On his part, remembering the warning which he
received, Gawain ate only, and this in spite of solicitations
on his entertainer's side, the doom of whom seems to
have been working strongly, seeing that it drew to its
term, and he was compelled to entreat that which would
operate against his salvation. Lancelot and the other
companion quenched their thirst with wine, which over-
came them immediately, as if it were nepenthe devised
for that express purpose, and they fell asleep. The
lord of the Castle fulfilled his office zealously, and again
tempted Gawain ; but, finding no better success, he desisted,
and thereafter began the high pageant, the foremost in
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which were maidens, and she who was fairest among all
— the crowned priestess who carried the Most Holy
Reliquary — was recognised as her who had counselled
him previously in the Quest — counselled him above all,
as did other wandering messengers in the romances of
Perceval — not to forget the question did ever he come to
the place. If he could not be compelled therefore, he
could at least be prompted, and the convention recalls
that indicible word which ex hypothesi cannot be spoken
or written and yet is communicated to the initiate of
many mysteries, when he finds that he has been acquainted
always therewith.
Before the company — which was numerous within as
without — had taken their places at the table, a page
of the chambers brought in the Hallow of the Sword
and laid it at the feet of the Master. The inference is
that this was the fatal weapon which, in the midst of the
strife of kinsmen, had somehow brought woe on the
Castle, but the particulars are not given, and of itself the
weapon would be nothing to our purpose, except that it
is the antithesis of other swords in the legends. Not
only was it perfect then but would so remain for ever ;
it was adjudged to the successful quester and would
break in no peril — an office of relaxed observance which
shortened and simplified the Quest.
Now, the company in the Castle had feasted gallantly,
like the guests who sat with the Master ; though dead,
they yet spoke — and that, it would seem, volubly —
interchanging questions and answers, as if in mockery
of the real question ; but the strong wine of the banquet
had no effect on them, and the Lord of the plenty mean-
while, as I have said, had fasted. But the appearance
of the Graal procession was the signal that he was to
receive a certain shadow of nourishment — as if, after
some necromantic supper, a disqualified Eucharist were
communicated to one who had not partaken previously.
We know already that the Reliquary contained the sem-
blance of a Host, as from the Lance there exuded blood—
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neither more nor less, in this case, than those three
mystic drops which ensanguine all the legends and
connect them, as if undesignedly, with other and older
mysteries. In the story of Wolfram the first nourish-
ment drawn from the Graal at the banquet in the Castle
Hall is described as bread, and Heinrich — following the
prototype of Guiot or profiting by a caution in respect
of the Feeding Dish — converts the sacred object into a
simple ciborium. The Master of the Castle received
therefore in bread and in the colouration of wine ; but
of the bread he took only a third part, as if it were the
efficient oblation at the sacrifice of the Mass. There is
no reason to think that these were consecrated elements,
but there seems to have been a substituted Eucharist, in
which the dead might be supposed to share, so that,
prince or lord — or whatever it is right to term him — he
was fed sacramentally and super-substantially in some
sense, for this his only nourishment was administered
once in a year. Therefore Gawain arrived at a happy
season, to see and to speak ; and on seeing these things,
he overflowed in himself with the wonder and the
mystery of it all, so that, acting on the spur of the
moment, importunately he asked that which was vital
to those who were suffering from death in life — the
mystic question, the most conventional of all formulae :
What does it mean ? There was no effect to begin with
—no sudden change, I mean, as from life to death or
from death to life ; but if before there was the chaffer
and traffic of light talk at a feasting, now it was the
hubbub of a joy beyond suppression, as if the closing at
last were taken in a great grade of long sorrow.
Gawain has asked indeed, but as regards the secrets
of the Graal he is not told anything ; it has come forth
out of mystery and it passes away therein. It is said to
be God's mystery — one of the Secrets of the King, and
Heinrich has written about it — abscondere bonum est. Of
the woe, the wasting and the endurance, when brother
warred upon brother, he learned something, and we have
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
heard enough ; of Perceval's failure and the deepened
misery therefrom he was told also, and the condition of
release resident in the question. But the king himself
was guiltless, and so also were the maidens ; he, however,
was dead with all the men of his household, but they
were alive in the flesh and they would go forth in the
morning. When that dawned presently, the released
speaker vanished, the Graal also with him, and its mystery,
never to be seen more.
The following points may be noticed in conclusion of
this part : (#) There is no question anywhere of feeding
properties in the Sacred Reliquary, except as regards the
king — and him it feeds sacramentally ; (^) the Spear
does not distil blood until it is laid on a table, with the
head apparently over the salver ; (c) the recession of the
Graal seems to have been adjudged because it has per-
formed its work of feeding the dead Master, keeping
him in the semblance of life, and once this office was
perfected it went like a ghost. After what manner the
variations which are introduced thus into the shifting
pageant of the legend can be said to elucidate its object
will not be determined easily. The doom that involves
the dwellers in the Castle changes the symbolism but
certainly does not exalt it. The romance, for the rest, is
the work of one who has resolved to give the palm to
Gawain at the express expense of Perceval, to the knight
of this world in place of the knight celestial. It is the
experiment of an inventor who has adapted some old
materials to another purpose, at once indeterminate and
undesirable.
The date ascribed to the poem is about 1220, and its
ingarnering as a whole is regarded as a little chaotic. It
reaches some 30,000 verses, and though we hear generally
concerning King Arthur's Court and the Round Table,
Gawain is the hero-in-chief. After his completion of the
Graal Quest, various pageants of chivalry bring him back
to his uncle and the fellowship, the story in this manner
reaching its natural close.
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The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
V
THE TITUREL OF ALB REG HT PON
SCHARFENBERG
The secret doctrine of Guiot de Provence and the high
tradition of the starry heavens not only failed to convince
the minstrel world in Germany concerning the indefectible
titles of Parsifal, with its root-matter written in the
starry heavens — of which our example is Heinrich — but
it failed to hold even those who had no alternative and
more elect hero to offer — of which the example, within
certain limits, is Albrecht. It came about that at the
end of that century which had seen the light of Wolfram
there arose the succeeding light of him who was to follow,
and, having regard to the welcome which he received, the
German world was evidently looking for another. He
came to announce — like the French romances before him
— that the Graal was taken away. Albrecht von Schar-
fenberg was a Bavarian poet, who wrote about 1270. He
undertook to carry the whole experiment to its term,
which he did in a vast poem of 45,000 verses, written
in the obscure style of his predecessor-in-chief, whence —
and for other reasons — the distinct individualities were con-
fused for a considerable period. He incorporated various
materials, for there was firstly the intervention of an
anonymous and unknown poet, who seems to have under-
taken but not completed the task, and, secondly, there were
certain so-called Titurel fragments which were the work
of Wolfram himself. Of the first I can say nothing,
except that he is believed to have projected a complete
chronicle of the Graal and its keepers, drawing for this
purpose on the source used by Wolfram. It is a matter
of speculation at what point he broke off and for what
reason, but his mantle fell upon Albrecht. Of the
materials left by Wolfram we know all that is needful,
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and they are quite unconsonant with our purpose. They
are two in number, and the opening lines of the first
fragment explain why they have been termed a Titurel
poem. They are really, by Wolfram's evidence, parts of
the early history of Sigune and Schionatulander — respec-
tively, the cousin of Parsifal and her lover, whose em-
balmed body she carries with her so long in the Parsifal
poem. Contrary to the evidence of this, it appears from
the fragments that the lover met his death in satisfying a
whim of his mistress. Albrecht, or his precursor, incor-
porated these fragments, and in many ways otherwise the
Younger Titure/, as it is called, while it covers the same
ground, also supplants the earlier knightly epic and
carries the history of the Graal — as I have indicated — to
its final term. I have explained that the lateness of the
poem has excluded it, in the mind of scholarship, from
the canon of the Graal ; but it has some aspects of im-
portance, and its consideration will help us better to
understand the position and claim of the German cycle.
To that cycle it makes a real contribution, and it differs
in this respect from the metrical romance of Lohengrin,
which is ascribed to the year 1300. This is an important
document for the legend of the Swan Knight, but its
allusions to the Holy Graal are mostly of the occasional
kind. As such, however, they offer a complete revolution
of the whole Arthurian cycle in respect of the close in
disaster of all those gracious times of chivalry. The
star of the king's destiny does not close in blood and
warfare —
" In dark Dundagel by the northern sea "-
owing to that frightful fatality by which Arthur begat
Mordred on the body of his own half-sister. Other stars
intervened in their power to avert the doom and ven-
geance for that which was done in ignorance. In place
of the dubious mercy of healing at the hands of Morgan
le Fay in the mystic island of Avalon, the king — at the
head of his whole chivalry — carries the Graal to India,
416
The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
and he and they are its guardians even to this day in
the remote, undeclared places of the eastern world.
The Titurel differs also from that interned manuscript
concerning Parsifal and the Round Table which is preserved
among the treasures of the Vatican — being the sole copy
that is known. It was written a little earlier than the year
1336, and it incorporates Manessier's conclusion of the
Conte del Graal with materials derived from the Parsifal
and Titurel. It is therefore a work of compilation, and
does not as such concern us.
Now, one important point with regard to the poem
of Albrecht is that he rejected the antecedent history of
the Holy Graal bequeathed by his earlier German peer
in poetry and reverted for his thesis concerning it to the
more orthodox traditions of Northern France. In a word,
the sacred object is no longer a stone, whether that in
the crown of Lucifer or that which consumes the Phoenix
and at the same time incubates the egg which the bird
has laid. It is the Eucharistic vessel of Joseph, with
whom its history begins, so that once again — and but
once in the German cycle — we can kneel in spirit while
Mass is being said in the Sanctuary, looking towards that
time when we also, at the secret words of consecration,
shall behold the five changes.
The Titurel claims to give the perfect and rectified
history of the Vessel and its Wardens from the beginning
to the end thereof. Considering that the first Graal King
is the real centre of interest, an excessive space is devoted
to Sigune and her lover — but this I refer to the anony-
mous poet who preceded. At the inception it gives
the generations of the secret dynasty from the days of
Vespasian, when Berillus the Cappadocian, who had
great possessions and was moreover of the Christian faith,
took service with the Roman general at the siege of Jeru-
salem and followed in his train subsequently when he
was called to the throne of the empire. Berillus married
Argensilla, the daughter of the emperor, and a con-
siderable part of France was thereafter assigned to him in
417 2 D
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
fief. He had as issue Titurisone, who married Elizabel
of Aragon and of her — after long years and precious
offerings in pilgrimage at the Holy Sepulchre, because
of their childless condition — there was born Titurel, this
name being, as one writer has indicated, a contraction
of the parental names. It will be seen that the genealogy
takes back the so-called Angevin dynasty to a very early
period of the Christian centuries, as well as to those
districts which abut on the Holy Fields. The remaining
succession in the keepership follows the indications of
Wolfram, and the main outlines of the Quest are also
followed in substance, with no remarkable exception.
Wolfram knew nothing of that sister of Parsifal who
attained to such spiritual heights in the Quest of Galahad^
and Albrecht — who knew indeed, since he had fair op-
portunity to be acquainted with the whole cycle — does
not, if I remember, mention her ; but, on the other hand,
he has not elected to ignore the marriage of Parsifal or
all reference to Kondwiramur. It follows that, in dedi-
cating that hero to the great exaltation, he considered
that his virgin celibacy was not a first qualification within
the domain of Nature. And these words may be called
an introduction to a short statement concerning the
ascetic aspects of Die Jungere Titurel. They are sup-
posed to be somewhat pronounced, and to impress
upon the poem a peculiar ecclesiastical aspect, which
I interpret as meaning that it carries the seal of
sanctity rather than the seal of ethics and other pre-
liminary exercises in the school without the gates. At
the same time, I see nothing in the poem to connect
it with the mystical degrees, and I see nothing to indicate
the conscious existence on the part of the author of any
subsurface sense. It lends itself to a construction of
this kind only in the way that all great books of romance
— and greater than is this book — speak otherwise than in
the external tongues to the higher part of our nature.
It is only by reflection from the sources in Northern
France that the Titurel reproduces — as we shall see that
418
The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
it does — the recession of the Graal. Perhaps — but I do
not know — Albrecht may have divined dimly that the
heaven of Galahad's attainment and the land of Prester
John are neither of them out of this world, and, so far
as distance goes, not especially more remote than the
corner of the nearest street. In such case, by saying that
it went to India he would know that he was telling the
same story as he who testified that the hand which had
no body came right to the vessel and so took it and bore
it up to heaven. Perhaps — in the alternative sense — the
episode spelt nothing more for the poet than a good
illustration of that which follows from the common un-
worthiness of the world. He describes the evil time which
fell upon things outside the precincts of the Temple, and
it was in pursuance of their own counsels of prudence,
rather than by an instruction from within, that the Keepers
of the Holy Vessel in fine convened the cohort of the
Templar chivalry and that Parsifal, accompanied by them
and carrying the Hallows of the House, went in quest
of his brother Feirfeis, so reaching India.
The Parsifal of Wolfram indicates that Prester John was
the issue of this brother ; but the Titurel represents him
as an independent ruler in the East, despite his attributed
genealogy, and gives such an account of himself and his
wonderful kingdom that the reigning keeper is minded,
and indeed prompted by Feirfeis, to bequeath the Graal
to his care. When, however, he came into his august
presence, bearing the Holy Vessel, the Priest-King offered
his realm and crown to him who was the Graal King.
Parsifal, on his part, desired to enter his service, for
report had well assured him that all material and spiritual
riches abode with Prester John, even the Seven Gifts and
the Twelve Fruits of the Divine Spirit of Counsel. But
the decision was not between them, for there was an
intervention on the part of the Graal, by which it was
ordained that Parsifal should remain as he was, the
Guardian of the Holy Vessel. He 'became therefore
the heir of Prester John and assumed his name. At the
419
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
prayers of the keeper, the Castle and the Sanctuary of
Mont Salvatch were transported in a single night to India,
like a mystic city of Irem, so that the great Palladium
had again its proper asylum. It was this, I conclude,
that led to the whole chivalry remaining as they were in
the East, whereas, if they had relinquished their trust, they
would have returned whence they came. So does the
House of the Doctrine follow the transit of Doctrine, as
the house of man at his highest is wherever the highest
is attained. It is for this reason that Wisdom has finished
its temples, seeing that its proper habitations are waiting
all over that world which once was built in Wisdom.
It is to Ethiopia or Turkey that other legends refer
the retreat of Prester John, which really was " built in the
unapparent." There is therefore no need to co-ordinate
rival versions, nor would such a task be possible in the
conflicting accounts of Albrecht and Wolfram. To
vary the issues of confusion, I will mention only that,
according to the Dutch Lancelot, the Priest-King appears to
have been Perceval's son. It is thought that the reticence
of Wolfram on the whole subject is explicable by the fact
that there were few materials at his period, while in the
fifty subsequent years the rumours of the eastern legend
had extended and was available to Albrecht. But it
should be mentioned that the first rumour is referable to
1156, and before the end of the twelfth century it had
the support of Maimonides as well as of the wandering
Israelite, Benjamin of Tudela. The seat of Peter had
done more than confess to an attraction when an embassy
was sent to Prester John bearing a written communication
from Alexander III. ; and before 1180, or at and about
this time, the Emperor of Constantinople is supposed to
have received the celebrated letter in which the mysterious
potentate announced his own existence with consummate
grandiloquence. It was a pretentious and impossible docu-
ment in the worst style of false-seeming, but it created
great interest and great wonder. It concerns us only
because it may have provided certain materials both for
420
The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
Wolfram and Albrecht. The palace of Prester John is
like the Castle of Mont Salvatch drawn out into a greater
wilderness of building, and the Parsifal allusions to
the Earthly Paradise are recalled by the account of that
spring which is three days' journey from the Garden
of Eden. Whosoever can drink of its water will have,
through all his later life, the aspect of thirty years —
precisely that period which was maintained by the
Templar chivalry owing to the presence of the Graal.
The myth has been noticed exhaustively by several
writers ; it never required exploding, but that work was
done in the seventeenth century by Julius Bartolocci
in his Magna Bibliotheca Rabbinica.
I have only to add concerning Albrecht and his Titurel
(#) that in the earlier part of the fourteenth century it
was not only allocated to Wolfram, as we have seen, but
was held to be his master work ; (£) that all assertions
notwithstanding, the hypothesis of Albrecht's acquaintance
with the poem of Guiot is regarded as precarious ; (c) that
the Titurel represents King Arthur and his knights as
travellers in search of the Graal after it had been taken
away : it was a vain journey, of which Parsifal had
calculated the probabilities beforehand when he took
leave of the Round Table ; but the adventure — as we
have seen — is the root-matter of that other fable which
was conceived subsequently by the author of the metrical
Lohengrin.
VI
THE DUTCH LANCELOT
The quest undertaken in our work of high research is
long enough, and it is also toilsome enough, to spare us
from the consideration in full of any extraneous issues,
though these are yet of our kinship ; but I am speaking
of a great literature to those who are unversed therein,
albeit they are not otherwise unacquainted with the mys-
421
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
terious ways in which God declares Himself. I am called
upon therefore to say something of all the branches, but
must touch lightly where we are not concerned deeply.
The Dutch Lancelot is a compilation which is known only
by a single text, and this is incomplete, unfortunately, the
first part out of four original parts being now wanting.
The authorship is unknown and so is the date of com-
position ; but, by those who are competent to speak, the
extant manuscript has been assigned to the early part of
the fourteenth century. Were it otherwise, it might be
said with greater certainty than is now possible that it had
taken the chief field of Graal romance for its province.
The missing first volume must have contained indubit-
ably the earlier life of Lancelot, and it may have
included by inference some part of the quest and
initial failure of Perceval at the Graal Castle. The
second book contains the adventures of Agravain, the
brother of Gawain, a knight of pride and violence ;
but this is already late in the history of the hero-in-
chief, and it is in the so-called Agravain section that
Lancelot pays his first visit to Castle Corbenic and that
the conception of Galahad is encompassed. The poem
reverts thereafter to dealings with Perceval, and has traces
of a tradition which is not extant in the romances of
Northern France. There are variations, for example, in
the development of the tasks proposed by the messenger of
the Holy Graal to the knights of King Arthur's Court.
Correspondences are traced : (#) with the variations in
the Montpellier MS. of the Conte del Graal; (V) with
the Vatican German Perceval ; and (c] at a distance, with
Wolfram's Parsifal. The Quest of Galahad occupies the
third book, and the fourth brings all to its term in the
Morte d Arthur. The Dutch romance is a poem, and
even in this, its present dismembered form, it is a work of
vast extent. As in respect of my own province I have
not assumed all languages, I know the original only by the
collation of available channels of research. That which
has impressed me concerning it is the important, though
422
The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
fluidic, analogy which it offers to the poem of Heinrich
in its judgment on Perceval. Therein the Lord of the
Hallows and those by whom he was engirded had great
hopes of the latter, but because he had entered the Castle
and did not ask the question he was discarded once and
for all. Now, the Dutch Lancelot, at the conclusion of
the second book, has a text of unknown origin which I
have held over in my previous enumeration to speak of
more adequately here. This is the episodic or biographi-
cal romance of Morien, the son of Agloval and the nephew
of Perceval, a b'ack knight, corresponding to Feirfeis, who
is Perceval's haf-brother in the romance of Wolfram.
Morien is, however, a Christian when he arrives in the
realms of the W^st, and he is in search of his father,
to whom he is in f.ne united. It is in the course of his
story, which is otherwise unimportant to our purpose,
that we learn as fohows concerning the Holy and Sacra-
mental Mystery : —
(i) King Arthur — who here, as otherwhere, manifests
his unfailing love and \nxiety for Perceval — is represented
lamenting his loss beciuse he had gone in search of the
Graal and the Sacred lance, but there were no news con-
cerning him. Now, the ;ext states — and this is on the part
of the King, by the way rf foreknowledge or prophecy—
that he will never find ttem — that is to say, upon earth.
(2) The same conviction may have entered into the
proper heart of the Son of the Widow Lady ; but Sir
Gareth, the brother of GaVain, is he who announces the
reason, which is not on account of his failure but because
Perceval sinned in leaving his mother to die of grief at
his absence. On this accom he might search till the
Kingdom which is above Descends on the Kingdom
which is below but his pains would be his only meed. We
see here that a responsibility which is of right made
transient only becomes perrunent and insuperable for
a moment — but this is in appeaance solely. (3) Perceval,
on his part, has been convi ced of his sin and has
embraced the life of a hermt as the proper path of
423
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
atonement. (4) But Arthur and Gareth notwithstanding,
the intention of the tale is to restore Perceval forgiven to
the higher life of chivalry, and we have accordingly
(5) the vision of Sir Agloval, the brother of Perceval,
who speaks of a Golden Staircase seen therein, which,
by interpretation, is more than the sunbeam whereon the
Graal enters in the Great Quest, for it symbolises the
Sacred Vessel as another ladder of Jacob leading to the
Throne and the Kingdom, and this is also for Perceval
as the days of the life of him. It Mowed that he
should yet have his place in the Quest, and it was
foretold that in such high service he should pass to his
reward on high. That which is here foretold is of course
fulfilled to the letter in the part which /follows thereafter
— that is to say, in the Quest of Galahad.
The Dutch Lancelot is in some respects that which I
indicated at the beginning, an attempt to harmonise all
the cycles by dealing (a) with the Quest of Perceval and
its initial failure ; (£) with that of Gawain, corresponding
to the Montpellier intercalation of the Conte del Graal ;
and (<:) finally with the union of Galahad, Perceval and
Bors, according to the plenary inspiration of the Great
Quest. I recur now to the poiat which I made at the
close of the third section. The Dutch Lancelot offers the
position of a text which had e^ry opportunity to profit
in universals and not in particvlars only by the poem of
Wolfram ; but, though it is uader the obedience of the
prototype created by the Parsral and the Conte del Graal
for the early history of Perceval, it redeems him only at
the close, by a kind of tour fe force , in its adaptation of
the story of stories. • /
The conclusion of all tl/is inquiry into the German
cycle of the Holy Graal fe that the hand of Guiot is
traceable, at whatever distance, through all its length ;
at times it is the ruling haid, at others it intervenes for
a moment. He seems also reflected into the Greater
Chronicles in Northern/ French ; for, setting aside
those almost accidental connections which are found in
424
The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
the Book of the Holy Graal, there are the similitudes,
which I have termed haunting, in the Longer Prose
Perceval. The King of Castle Mortal is drawn in much
darker colours than Klingsor, the magician of Wolfram,
but they derive from the same root.
It is obvious that in such a summary account of the
German cycle there are points, and they are indeed
manifold, which have been omitted from the foregoing
sections. Those who have preceded me in England
with valuable and extended monographs on individual
texts and with studies of particular groups will be the
first to dispense generosity towards a work which em-
braces the whole literature in a single volume, more
especially if they are able to realise that I am not ad-
dressing their audience, but rather a school set apart
and among whom no knowledge of the subject can be
presupposed safely. It is for this reason that I have
had to recover the same ground on several occasions,
increasing the difficulty of my task, as it was not less
important to avoid verbal repetition in devotion to the
high canons of literature than to spare my readers the
weariness of continual reference to anterior sections or
books. Before leaving the German cycle, I will embrace
in a brief schedule certain accessory matters, belonging to
its several parts, which — without being essential thereto
— are of sufficient interest to demand inclusion.
The Parsifal of Wolfram. — It should be noted (i)
that there is no passage of Hallows from East to West ;
there is no enchantment of Britain ; and there are no
times which are termed specially adventurous; (2) that
Parsifal's uncle, Trevrezent, confessed to having tampered
with the truth in respect of his Graal history, so as to
dissuade the hero from the Quest, and that this is pos-
sibly the root-reason of the uncle's misdirections in all
the romances.
The Lost Quest of Guiot. — (i) There was a great
movement of literature from Southern to Northern France
and through Northern France to England at the period
425
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
of Henry II. He married Eleanor of Guienne, who is
said to have brought Provensal poets in her train. If
therefore we can suppose that Guiot de Provence and
his poem antedated all other Graal literature, they may
have become known in this manner, and it will then
seem at first sight that we have accounted for the
appearance subsequently of Graal literature in Northern
French. But this is an explanation with the disadvan-
tage of a fatal facility, because Guiot, as we can divine
concerning him, is incapable of accounting for Graal
romance outside the one text that we know him to have
influenced in Germany. (2) It was on an illusory assump-
tion of this kind that the Perceval legend was classed as
Celtic by Schulze, but the Graal, on the other hand, as
Proven9al. The first statement is true obviously, but
the Graal of Guiot is not the Graal of Northern France.
The marriage of Schulze's two classes is said to have been
contracted about 1150; but I do not believe that any sacra-
mental mystery was incorporated by southern romance ;
only the shadow of the Eucharist is found in Wolfram. (3)
The test of such a possibility is the affirmed traditional
hostility to the Church of Rome on the part of most
troubadours. Northern French romance had no such
implicit : it is a literature written round the great
heart of Christian catholicity. (4) The analogy of trou-
badour poetry with Graal literature is slight after all.
If we set aside the Conte del Graal, love, for example,
is only an accident of the cycle, and it is totally absent
from two of the highest texts. The mystic side of
human love in poetry and its Proven9al reflections are
a light of Moslem ecstasy. (5) Scholarship holds that
Wolfram and Chretien drew from the same source, more
especially as regards the adventures of Gawain. This
raises a question respecting the identity, language and
real locality of Guiot. It is acknowledged on all sides
that if he had written in the langue a"oc, he would not
have been understood by Wolfram. One speculation iden-
tifies him with the author of the Bible Guiot, but this
426
The German Cycle of the Holy Graal
person was of Provins in the Alsace-Lorraine district.
The suggestion, I suppose, is that Provins was mistaken
for Provence by Wolfram. Had Guiot promulgated
in the South so wonderful a legend as that of the Graal,
it is incredible that his name should never have tran-
spired among his contemporaries ; though his poem is
now lost, his memory should at least have lingered.
The Spanish Cycle. — (i) We have seen that Spain
has no indigenous literature of the Holy Graal ; it has
only accidental reflections by way of translation, and
with all deference to the curious implicits connected with
the Jew of Toledo, I think that this is final as to any-
thing of prototypical matter of the Graal having come out
of the Peninsula. (2) This notwithstanding, if ever the
missing Guiot should be discovered in fine, it will be
probably in a Spanish monastery. Whatever language
he wrote in, the poet had evidently Provencal sym-
pathies, interests and erudition, and we know that in
1820, on the evidence of Fr. Jayme de Villanueva, there
were large collections of unedited Provencal poets in
the archives of Spanish churches. This is readily ex-
plained (#) by the intimate union between the court of
Provence and that of Barcelona ; (£) by the union of the
crown of Provence and the crown of Aragon in the
person of Alphonso the Second, and it is Aragon that
once at least was especially rich in such manuscripts ;
(r) by the popularity of Provencal poetry in Catalonia
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A poem
breathing the Provencal atmosphere and inspired by the
Proven9al spirit, though not actually in the langue d'ocy
may well have drifted into Spain from Provence without
leaving traces behind it at either point.
427
BOOK VII
THE HOLT GRAAL IN THE LIGHT OF
THE CELTIC CHURCH
THE ARGUMENT
I. STATEMENT OF A POSSIBLE IMPLICIT ACCOUNTING
FOR ALL CLAIMS. — The Celtic Church as an environment
of the Graal literature — Its traces of Eastern influence — Of
the spirit of the East in the Graal Legend — Its implicit*
as reflections of the Celtic Church — The source of British
Christianity independent of Rome — Reference to the Johannine
Rite — Certain considerations which would determine the
present inquiry. II. THE FORMULA OF THE HYPOTHESIS
SCHEDULED. — Of Britain as a microcosm of the world —
An analogy from the Apocalypse — Celtic religious sympathies —
The hypothesis under review — Celtic origin of the Graal
Legend — The Legend as an ecclesiastical growth — The
Graal Church — St. David and his miraculous Altar — The
Fish Symbol and the Rich Fisherman — The Secret Words as
an evasive reference to the Epiclesis clause — Nature of
this clause in Eucharistic consecration — Celtic Hereditary
Keepers of Relics — General characteristics of the Celtic Relic
—Of Mass Chalices — Of mystic and holy cups — Of the
Columbarium and the Graal Dove — The disappearance of
St. David's Altar — Withdrawal of the Celtic Rite — The
Celtic Church and the Druids — Cadwaladr and Galahad —
The return of the British King — Claims connected with
Glastonbury — The substitution of Joseph of Arimathtea for
St. David — Further concerning Fish symbolism — And con-
cerning Mass chalices — Of Mystic Bells — A Church conse-
crated by Christ — Super-Apostolical succession — The House of
43 !
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Anjou — A mystery of the Celtic Mass — Summary of the
whole matter — The Celtic Book of the Graal and the Secret
Mass-Book. III. IN WHAT SENSE THE PLEA MUST BE
HELD TO FAIL. — Some preliminary admissions — The Secret
Tradition of the Epoch — Further concerning Super- Apostoli-
cal Succession — History of the Church in Britain — Further
concerning the Johannine Rite — Absence of Passion-Relics
in the Welsh Church — The Epiclesis clause does not explain
the Secret Words — Greek mode of consecration — Distinctions
between Cadwaladr and Galahad — Fantasy of the VIR
AQUATICUS — The Altar of St. David a false ground of
comparison — Substitutes for the sacramental Cup — True posi-
tion of the Glastonbury claim — No substitution of Joseph for
St. David — The Second Joseph — Another light on King
Arthur s chalice — And on the Mystery of the Celtic Mass
— Further concerning a Secret Book of the Mass — The Pan-
Britannic Church and the Graal literature — The Celtic
Church and the liternture. IV. THE VICTORY OF THE
LATIN RITE. — Of Rome and the other Assemblies — Why
Rome prevailed — The conclusion that we must go further.
432
BOOK VII
THE HOLT GRAAL IN THE LIGHT OF THE
CELTIC CHURCH
I
STATEMENT OF A POSSIBLE IMPLICIT
ACCOUNTING FOR ALL CLAIMS
AMONG all external organisations there is one institution
— and there is one only — which, on the principle that the
best is the nearest, might be expected to offer some of
those signs and warrants that we should expect in a
society, a sodality, a body — let me* say, at once, in a
church — which could and did connect with the idea of
the Holy Graal — as something nearest to its source, if
not indeed that centre from which the entire mystery
originated.
The early history of the Holy Graal, as distinguished
from the several quests undertaken for the discovery of
that sacred object, is one of Christianity colonising. We
know in the French cycle, by the universal voice of the
texts, that it was a mystery which was brought into
Britain, and seeing that the legend, as a whole, is —
apart or otherwise from anything involved by the im-
plicits thereof — assuredly of Celtic origin, its religious
elements, in the absence of any special and extrinsic
claims, must be accounted for most readily by the
characteristics of the Celtic Church.
It is much closer to our hands than anything which has
been suggested alternatively, and it was unquestionably
433 2 E
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that environment in which some of the legends developed.
Those who have previously recognised, in their imperfect
and dubious way, that the great legends have a mystic
aspect, and that hence they are probably referable to some-
thing in instituted mysticism, have put forward bare possi-
bilities, and, independently of these, scholarship has itself
gone much further afield. It has thought of the Far East
as the home of the Holy Graal, and some who are
mystics by more than a predisposition on the surface,
know certainly — even if it is in a certain sense only — that
there is a country deep in Asia. Now, albeit the limits of
our evidence concerning the Celtic Church are circum-
scribed somewhat narrowly, there seems no doubt that
this Church bore traces of Eastern influence — by which I
mean something stronger and plainer than resides in the
common fact that Christianity itself came to us from the
oriental world. If, therefore, the Holy Graal has any
marks and spirit of the East, it might be accounted for
in this manner by way of the most colourable inference.
If, however, we prefer to consider without any further
preface what is the palmary claim of all, and if therefore
we appeal to the veiled suggestion of pre-eminence in the
Graal priesthood in respect of an extra-valid form of conse-
crating the Eucharistic elements and of a super-apostolical
succession, it may be advanced that here is simply an ex-
aggerated reflection of that which was actually claimed by
the Celtic Church and more especially by that Church in
Wales. The claim was that it had a title to existence
independently of Rome, Christianity having been estab-
lished in these islands for a long period prior to the
arrival of St. Augustine, which arrival, from this point of
view, was an incursion upon territory already conquered
and held to a defined extent rather than a sacred en-
deavour to spread the gospel of Christ ; thus it brought
spiritual war rather than the light of truth. I have
classed these two points together — that is to say, the
alleged oriental origin and the original independence of
Rome — not because I regard the second as important in
434
The Light of the Celtic Church
comparison with the first, but because as a fact we know
that the Celtic Church had a certain autonomous exist-
ence long before the legend of Joseph of Arimathaea was
devised in the local interests of Glastonbury. It was not,
therefore, at the beginning any question of Angevin ambi-
tion. Further, we can, I think, understand very well how
this claim may have been exaggerated in legend, so as to
cover — as I have said — the special implicits which I have
traced in the Graal literature, and therefore to account for
it within as the general characteristics of the Celtic
Church may account for it reasonably without. I pro-
pose now to set forth some other specific analogies, from
which we shall be enabled in fine to draw a general
conclusion whether we can be satisfied with the evidence
as it so stands, or whether we must go further. Let us
remember, in the first place, that the earlier point, if it
can be taken apart from the later, would mean probably
an origin for the Holy Graal independent of Celtic en-
vironment, like that of some Eastern heretical sects which
passed into southern France ; otherwise a derivation
through Spain ; or, as an alternative to both, the transit,
for example, of the Johannine tradition westward. But if
we abandon the earlier and are compelled to have recourse,
or this mainly, to the later point, then the legend of
the Holy Graai — because it contains elements which are
foreign to the mind of romance, though it is expressed
in the romance form — must belong to that class of fable
which has been invented in an external interest, and its
position is not much better than one of forged decretals ;
it is, indeed, a decretal in literature, put forward in many
forms and with many variants, and it would be useless to
look therein for any secret intention beyond that of the
particular pretension which it was designed to support.
With the merits and defects of Celtic Christianity in
Britain, we are sufficiently acquainted to deal rather
summarily respecting the value of any mystical sugges-
tions which are discernible in the cycles or remanents of
literature which must be regarded as belonging thereto.
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'The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
The suggested implicit with which I am dealing, if
found to obtain, would signify therefore the closing of
the whole inquiry.
II
THE FORMUL/E OF THE HYPOTHESIS
SCHEDULED
There are traces in the Anglo-Norman romances of a
certain fluidic sense in which Britain and its immediate
connections, according to the subsurface mind of their
writers, stood typically for the world. They were familiar
enough with the names of other regions — with Syria,
Egypt, Rome — above all, with the Holy Places in the
Jerusalem which is below ; but their world was the Celtic
world, comprised, let us say, between Scotia and Ireland
on the one side and central France on the other. This
region came, I think, to signify symbolically, and so we
hear that the failure to ask a one little question " involved
the destruction of kingdoms, while the belated inter-
rogation seems to have lifted the veil of enchantment
from the world itself. The cloud upon the sanctuary
was a cloud over that world ; its lifting was a glory
restored everywhere. But as the enchantment, except
within very narrow limits, and then ex hypothesi, was only
of the imputed order, so the combined restoration of
Nature in common with Grace was but imputed also ; the
woe and inhibition were removed as secretly as they were
imposed. So again, when the chivalry of the Round Table
— in the Greater Chronicles — covenanted to go forth on
the Quest of the Holy Graal, the universal and pro-
claimed object was to terminate the hard times of adven-
ture, which had become intolerable : pour deliveir noire
fais des grans mervelles et des estrainges auentures qui tant
y sont auenues, lone tans a. The whole position reminds
one of that chapter in the Apocalypse which presents a
436
\
The Light of the Celtic Church
sheaf of instructions to the Seven Churches of Asia. No
one knew better than the Jews not only concerning Rome,
Greece and Alexandria, but of the world extended further;
this notwithstanding, when the great book of the secret
Christian mystery was first written, the world of Christen-
dom was confined chiefly within narrow limits in Asia, and
this was the world of the Apocalypse. It was actually all
Assiah of Kabalism, though the few who have dared to
institute a philological connection between the one name
and the other have gone, as usual, astray. Recurring to
the fact out of which this analogy arises, let me add, as a
matter of justice to an hypothesis which I seek to present
adequately, that within this Celtic world the first and
most natural sympathies in the religious order would be
indubitably with its own aspirations, and I set aside there-
fore for the time being all speculation as to anything rich
and strange in Rite and Doctrine which may have been
brought from the Eastern world by those — whoever they
were — who first planted Christianity on the known con-
fines of the Western world. The chief points of the
hypothesis may be collected into a schedule as follows:—
1. It is certain that the Graal Legend is of Celtic
origin and making, because of the Celtic attributions of
the romances and their Celtic mise-en-scene and characters ;
because of the Celtic names, disguised and otherwise,
which are found in the romances, even in those which
belong to the Teutonic cycle ; and because of the un-
doubted derivations into the Graal Legend from Welsh
folklore. This is agreed on all hands, and will therefore
call of necessity for no extension or comment in this place.
2. The romance of the Holy Graal, regarding the
cycles synthetically, is a glorified ecclesiastical legend of
Celtic origin ; there are other ecclesiastical legends, refer-
able to the same source, which suggest the Graal atmos-
phere. The " Graal Church " was in its earlier stages
the Celtic Church contrasted with the Saxo-Roman.
3. The nucleus is to be found in the story of St.
David and his miraculous altar. The apostle of South
437
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Wales, with some other saints, made a pilgrimage in the
legend to Jerusalem, where the patriarch of the Holy City
invested him as archbishop and gave him " a consecrated
altar in which the body of our Lord once lay." It was
transported to Wales, performed innumerable miracles,
but after the death of St. David it was covered with skins
and was never seen by any one. According to a variant
of the legend, this altar — and possibly some other Hallows
— was carried through the air to Britain, and hence was
often described as e coelo veniens. Though apparently
it was the rock-hewn sepulchre mentioned in the New
Testament, no man could specify its shape, its colour,
or of what material it was fashioned ; in addition to its
other wonders, it gave oracles — that is to say, a voice
spoke therein, as it did, according to the romances, in the
Graal itself. St. David died about 601 A.D. ; he gave
the Mass to Britain ; he was of the lineage of Our Lady ;
and his birth having been foretold by the finding of a
great fish, he was termed the Waterman — vir aquations —
which recalls the Rich Fisherman of the later legends. It
might be said that this title was applicable especially to
him, as one who was rich in the conversion of souls to
Christ and in the greater gifts of sanctity. His ancestors
bore the name of Avallach, whence that of the king of
Sarras seems to be derived certainly ; and he is said to
have provided sacred vessels for the celebration of the
Eucharist.
4. The secret words of the Robert de Borron cycle
refer to the Epiclesis of the Celtic Rite. The form of
Eucharistic consecration in the Latin Rite is actually the
words of Institution — that is to say, the New Testa-
ment's account of the Last Supper. In the East, how-
ever, consecration is effected by addition of the Epiclesis
clause — that is, by the invocation of the Holy Spirit. In
its more usual form, it is a petition for the descent of the
Comforter, firstly, upon the worshippers, and, secondly,
upon the Altar gifts, that the elements may be converted
into the Divine Body and Blood. The liturgy of St.
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The Light of the Celtic Church
John Chrysostom may be consulted on this point ; indeed,
from one passage it would seem to follow that what was
communicated was the Holy Ghost, an idea in which all
that is usually attached to the Eucharistic office seems to
dissolve in a higher light. The evidence is, however,
confessedly somewhat indirect, as no Gallican or other
connected liturgy gives the words of institution, but they
are found in full in a North Italian, perhaps a Milanese,
liturgy, and elsewhere, as we shall see shortly. It has
been said that between 750 and 820 A.D. certain words
in the Celtic Rite vanished from the consecration of
the Eucharist, which would correspond, I suppose, ex
hypothesi^ to the intervention of the Roman Rite. The
Celtic was abolished formally about 850, but is said to
have survived to the period of the Graal literature. The
Welsh would have learned from the Crusades that the
Liturgy of the Holy Spirit was still used in the East.
5. The hereditary Graal Keepers, so strongly em-
phasised in the romances, are derived from the Hereditary
Relic Keepers of the Celtic Church. Mr. J. Romilly
Allen, in his Monumental History of the Early British
Church, has said : " The vicissitudes through which the
relics passed in the course of centuries were often of a
most romantic description. The story was generally the
same. The book, bell or crozier belonging to the founder
of the Church was supposed to have acquired peculiar
sanctity and even supernatural properties by association
with him ; and after his death it was often enclosed in
a costly metal shrine of exquisite workmanship. Each
relic had its hereditary custodian, who was responsible
for its safe keeping and who in return received certain
privileges, such as ... the title to inherit certain land,
of which the relic constituted the tenure." The pre-
servation of relics under hereditary guardianship seems
to have been common among Celtic families — as, for
example, the banner of St. Columba. So also the relics
of certain saints belonging to the Scoto-Irish Church
were placed in the care of families of hereditary keepers ;
439
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
these were consecrated objects, not human remains, and
they were regarded as of great virtue when borne in
battle by a person who was free from any deadly sin.
Sometimes a venerable cup was deposited in a special
shrine ; sometimes the book of the gospels was enclosed
in triple cases — as of wood, copper and silver. The
custody of such an object became an office of dignity
from generation to generation in a single family. The
general characteristics of the Celtic relic may be enu-
merated as follows, but it is not intended to say that
every sacred object possessed all the qualities : (a) It came
from heaven, like the Graal ; (b) it was of mysterious and
incomprehensible matter ; (c) it was oracular ; (d) like
the Graal, it had the power of speech ; (e) it healed the
sick, as the Graal did also occasionally, though this was
not its specific office ; (f) like the Graal, it must not be
seen by unqualified persons ; (g) it had the power of
miraculous self-transportation, and the Holy Cup, in
certain romances, was also a wandering vessel ; (7z) it acted
as a guide ; (/) it was a palladium ; (k) it executed judg-
ment on the wicked and profane, which is the charac-
teristic in chief of the Graal in the metrical romance of
De Borron.
6. In' the Panegyric of St. Columba, a document ascribed
to the last years of the eleventh century, it is recorded
among his other good works that — like his peer, St. David
of Wales — he provided a Mass Chalice for every Church
— presumably within his special sphere of influence or
perhaps even in the islands generally. Readers of the
prose Perceval Le Gallois will remember that chalices were
so uncommon in Arthurian days that the King, during
a certain quest, seems to have met with one, and that
miraculously, for the first time in his life. The ex-
planation is that wooden bowls may have been used
previously for purposes of consecration. This was at
the Mass of the Graal which Arthur was permitted to
see in the course of his travelling. We should remem-
ber at this point that it is only at the close of the cycle
440
The Light of the Celtic Church
in Northern French — that is to say, in the romance which
I have just mentioned, in that of Galahad and in the
Book of the Holy Graal, that the Sacred Vessel — its other
uses notwithstanding — is connected expressly and indu-
bitably with the administration of the Eucharist, though
it is not always the vessel of communion.
7. There are historical memorials of mystic and holy
cups, possessing great virtues and preserved in old Welsh
families. Among these is the Holy Cup of Tregaron,
which was made of the wood of the True Cross and its
healing virtues were manifested so recently as the year
1901. The curious thing in the romances is that the
Holy Graal heals every one except the Keeper himself,
who in the Perceval cycle can be cured only by a question,
and in the Galahad legend — but here it is a former
Keeper — by the magnetic touch of his last lineal de-
scendant.
8. In England during the Middle Ages — but this is a
side-issue which is mentioned only for its possible greater
antiquity and origin in Celtic times — the Eucharist was
reserved, as we have seen otherwise, in a Columbarium,
or Dove-House, being a vessel shaped like a dove. This
was the Tabernacle of its period, and it recalls (<?) some
archaic pictures of a Cup over which a dove broods ;
(#) the descent of a dove on the Graal stone in Wolfram's
poem ; (^) the passage of symbolic doves in connection
with the Graal procession as told by several romances,
but especially in the Quest of Galahad ; and (d) the office
of the Holy Spirit in the Graal legend. But it is also
suggested — and this, I believe, is by Huysman — that the
Tabernacle was frequently in the form of an ivory tower
to symbolise Christ in the womb of the Virgin, who is
herself called Turris eburnea.
9. The vanishing of the Graal refers (a) to the actual
disappearance of St. David's altar after the death of its
custodian ; (£) to the disappearance of the Celtic Church
before the Roman ; and (<:) to the subjugation of the
British by the Saxons. The Welsh Church was pre-
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
eminently a monastic church, and, in spite of the existence
of bishops, its government was in the hands of monks.
The claim of the ancient British Church generally, in-
cluding its legend that the first Church of Glastonbury
was consecrated by our Lord Himself, may help us to
explain the undertone of dissent from Rome which has
been noted here and there in the subsurface of the Graal
literature, but especially, as it has been thought, in the
Longer Prose Perceval. To appreciate the position fully,
we have to remember that the Latin rite gained ground
and influence with the Norman Conquest, though inde-
pendently of that rite there were monasteries in remote
valleys where the old liturgy and the ancient form of
consecration may have been still used and where also the
ancient wisdom of the Druids was preserved, though — in
spite of certain testimonies — it could have been scarcely
considered consistent for a man to be a mystic Druid
and also a Christian. The Druidic secret was symbolised
by the term Afalon, which means the Apple Orchard.
The last Welsh Archbishop of St. David's died in 1115,
and was succeeded by a Norman, that is to say, by a
Roman prelate.
10. Cadwaladr is Galahad. Galahad took away the
Holy Graal, because, according to the Welsh Quest, the
world was not worthy. His prototype, in despair of his
country, removed certain relics, and, by the testimony of
one tradition, he died in the Holy Land, as if he also
had departed to Sarras, with the intention of proceeding
further. Another story says that he projected the re-
conquest of Britain in a fleet furnished by his kinsman
Alain of Brittany, where he was then in exile ; but an
angel warned him to desist. He was to seek the Pope
and confess, and he would be canonised after his death
— which, according to this legend, occurred at Rome.
This chieftain, who loomed so largely in the Welsh
imagination, who, like Bran of pre-Christian legend, was
termed the Blessed, was regarded as of the royal line of
David ; he is thought to have been the custodian of holy
442
The Light of the Celtic Church
relics belonging to his family before him, and when he
died, in reality, as it seems, of the Yellow Sickness, in 664,
his return was confidently expected. So many legends
grew up around him that he appears to have gathered up
in himself all the aspirations of Celtdom. His return is
associated with the second manifestation of his relics and
with the final felicity of the Celts. Awaiting that event,
the entire British Church, for some reason not otherwise
explicable, began to droop and decay. But I may note
here that a great Welsh revival was inaugurated in the
year 1077 A.D. by the return of Rhys-ap-Tewdwr from
Brittany. Bards and Druids were at white heat, and
Rhys himself was a descendant traditionally of Cadwaladr
the Blessed, who was to restore all things. He even
claimed identity with that departed hero.
1 1 . When the particular set of claims connected with
Glastonbury began to be manufactured about 1150, to
centralise a wide field of interests at a defined point,
Joseph of Arimathaea was substituted for St. David.
There was the supposed body of Joseph, there the phial
which he brought containing the Precious Blood, there
also the body of King Arthur, and by imputation the
Sapphirus, the lost altar of the Welsh apostle, the last
of these recalling rather plausibly, and accounting for, the
Lap sit exillis^ or exilix^ of Wolfram. From this point of
view it is worthy of close attention (a) for its sacramental
connection ; (Z>) for its association with the body of our
Lord ; and (<:) for the mystery attaching to its form, with
which we may compare the vagueness which characterises
nearly all the descriptions of the Graal vessel.
12. The descent of the Graal prima materia from
folk-lore no more explains the Christian legend of the
Graal than the words vir and virtus explain the par-
ticular significance attaching to the term virtuoso. The
mythological Salmon of Wisdom as a prototype of the
Fish in De Borron's poem is a case in point. The real
approximate progenitor is the primitive Christian symbol,
which was familiar to Celtic Christianity, and seeing that
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the latter was much like the Church at large of several
centuries earlier, so it may have preserved things which
elsewhere had passed out of memory — the Ichthus symbol
among them. This signified Christ, and especially the
Eucharistic species. It also symbolised the Disciplina
Arcani and was the most general of Christian emblems ;
it passed into a specific form of expression for the conceal-
ment of the more interior mysteries, and to partake of the
Fish was an evasion for the reception of the sacrament.
13. His connection with the Quest of the Graal not
only enabled King Arthur to furnish chalices for churches
but bells also, which seem to have been unknown pre-
viously in Logres. In the Celtic veneration for relics
they bear, however, a conspicuous part, the examples being
far too numerous for recitation in this place. I can say
only that their cultus, their care, the keeperships instituted
in connection and the wonders ascribed to them are
common to ancient Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
14. Reverting once more to St. David, it is reported
traditionally that the first church which he built was
situated at Glastonbury, and in connection with this
ascription, it is said to have been consecrated by Christ
Himself, so that in more senses than in one sense merely the
place was a source and fountain of all religion in the King-
dom of Britain, as affirmed by William of Malmesbury.
It was therefore among ecclesiastical structures what the
second Joseph was among the bishops of Christendom.
If ever there was an arch-natural Mass celebrated and
a noumenal Eucharist administered at a specific place
in Logres, assuredly with these warrants it would have
been only at Glastonbury, the connection of which with
St. David raises one further point. The Celtic Church
held that the Roman Pontiff was the successor of St.
Peter, but the patriarch of Jerusalem — who ordained
the Apostle of Wales — was the successor of Christ.
The subsurface intention which created this legend
seems to have been nearly identical with that which
put forward the super-apostolical succession of Joseph
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The Light of the Celtic Church
II., and it follows that Celtic imagination at work
in the field of hagiology furnished the makers of
romance — and the author in particular of the Book of the
Holy Graal — with an ample groundwork. The substitu-
tion of the man of Arimathaea for the original patron of
Wales was the appropriation of an independent legend,
which served the ecclesiastical side of Angevin ambition
without affording a handle to the troublesome principality
on the western side of the vast dominions of Anjou.
15. There are " distinct traces of something ' queer ' in
the Masses of the earliest Celtic Church — before the com-
ing of St. David in Wales or of St. Columba in Scotland
and Ireland." An allusion to the " queerness " in question
may be found in the following passage of the Lesser Holy
Graal, forming part of the discourse of Christ to Joseph of
Arimathaea when He brought the Holy Graal to console
the prisoner in his tower : " Et ensinc con ge lou dis a
la table^ seront -pluseurs tables establies a moi sacrefier^ qui
senefiera la croiz, et lov vaissel la ou Fan sacrefiera et
saintefiera^ la fierre ou tu meis mon cors, que li caalices
senefiera oil mes cors sera sacrez, en samblance cfune o'iste,
et la 'platainne qui sera dessus mises senefiera lou couvercle
de coi tu me covris" &c. Alternatively, seeing that there
is no mention of the Blood, it may be " a manifesto of
the party who wished the chalice to be denied the laity,"
or, finally, the utterance of some obscure party or sect.
" The latter view finds some support in the Hermit's
story " — referring here to the Prologue of the Book of
the Holy Graal — " of his meeting with a knight who had
seen him in a place that he named."
1 6. And now as regards the summary of the whole
matter, the position may be expressed as follows : (a)
The Graal legend is demonstrably of Celtic stuff-
in part of Celtic folk-lore which has turned good
Christian, but more largely of ecclesiastical legend ; (£)
it derives from the story of St. David and his altar ; (c}
the original Graal book was probably a legend following
a special and peculiar Liturgy ; (d) the legend told of
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the Christianising of Britain by St. David, the celebration
of the Christian Mysteries on the saints' miraculous
altar, which was actually the sepulchre of our Lord, of
the wonders wrought by this altar, of the coming of the
heathens, the ruin of Britain, the flight of its King — who
was St. David's last descendant — bearing with him the
altar relic to the East. There he died, thence he shall yet
return, again bearing the relic ; the Britons shall triumph,
the Saxons shall suffer expulsion, and the mystic words
shall be uttered once more over the Thaumaturgic Altar.
It is obvious that, according to this hypothesis, the book,
which was far older than any Graal literature, remained
in concealment in Wales and perhaps was unearthed at
the Norman Conquest of Glamorganshire, when it was
modified, varied, exalted, transformed and allegorised by
successive makers of romance, being adapted specifically
as an aid to the House of Anjou, in its struggle with the
Pope, by the author of the Book of the Holy Graal —
whether Walter Map or another. But Rome proved
more than one part too strong and by more than one
interest too many for the ambition of Henry II., while as
regards Wales, it had long and long already succumbed
to the Latin Rite.
Ill
IN WHAT SENSE THE PLEA MUST BE HELD
TO FAIL
It is indubitable, and we have seen in the plenary sense,
that folk-lore provided its elements as the crude matter
of the scheme of the Holy Graal. It is true, and also
indubitable, that many accidentals of the Celtic Church
became accidentals of the literature ; they were worked
into the Graal cycle as well as the pre-Christian elements,
the process arising in the most natural of all possible
manners. It was not exactly that the most early romancers
took the matter which was nearest to their hands, but
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The Light of the Celtic Church
rather that there was no other ; the external aspect of
religion was of necessity therefore a reflection of the Celtic
Church. But as folk-lore does not explain the Christian
Graal and the high experiments of sanctity therewith
connected, so the contributory memorials on the Celtic
ecclesiastical side do not explain it either. Behind
all there lies the secret tradition of the epoch, and it is
this precisely which makes the whole research so remote
and intractable in respect of its final issues. I need
hardly say that the secret tradition had no claim to put
forward in respect of super-apostolical succession in the
form belonging, as we find, to the Graal literature, though
it had — ex hyfiothesi — its own Divine Warrants. This
claim may represent therefore, by a hazardous ascrip-
tion, the ecclesiastical political programme of the Anjou
dynasty in England, and it would be in this way a
separable element in the literature. There is no other
sense than this in which a Britannic Church shows any
true correspondence with Graal subsurface intention,
because that intention had neither hostility to Rome nor
a plea to put forward in respect of religious indepen-
dence and the institution of an autonomous pan-Britannic
Church. It follows that the secret tradition and the
glimpse which we obtain thereof in the Graal books are
either a mere dream, or the point of departure for this
sub-section must be a total denial of all that has been put
forward previously in regard to St. David's legend. As it
is premature, however, to make it a point of departure, I
must lead up to it from other considerations, and I will
therefore say a few further words concerning the Church
itself in Britain, not that they are essential to the
subject but for the information of those of my readers
who may have had no call to consider it.
Brief as it is, the following schedule will, I think, be
sufficient for the purpose, and I note : (a) that Christianity
existed in Britain during the Roman occupation, and that
three British bishops were present at the council of Aries,
about 350 A.D ; (Z>) that the extent of its diffusion is
447
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
doubtful, but it was probably the religion of Romans and
Romanised Britons in and about the garrison towns ; (<:)
that it became universal early in the fifth century, which
was the beginning of the age of Saints ; (d) that it is
doubtful whether the Celtic Church at this period was
a descendant of the Roman-British Church or a colonisa-
tion de novo from Gaul, but it may have combined both
sources ; (e) that an episcopal mission from Gaul into
Britain is certain, and its object is supposed to have been
the extinction of Pelagian heresy, or Pagan, as it has
been suggested alternatively ; (/) that the derivation ab
origine symboli was possibly from Ephesus through the
Johannine Rite into Southern Gaul, and thence into
Britain ; (g) that, also possibly, there were other
Oriental influences, and particularly from Egypt, in the
fifth century, the evidence being: (i) The derivation
of Celtic ornament from Egyptian ornament ; (2) the
commemoration in ancient Irish books of " Holy Egyptian
hermits " buried in Ireland ; (3) the correspondences
between the Celtic monastic system and that of Egypt ;
(4) the practice, attributed to St. Columba, of removing
his sandals before entering the sanctuary, a practice known
otherwise only in Egypt.
As regards the hypothesis put forward in the previous
sub-section, it is observable that we have not been invited
to consider in the Celtic Church any traces of a parti-
cular theological or doctrinal tradition — such as might,
for example, be inferred from the Johannine Rite — or
of an evasive or concealed claim ; it is not suggested that
in Wales, Scotia or Ireland there is any trace of an
ecclesiastical legend concerning a relic which at any dis-
tance might be held to offer a real correspondence with
that of the Holy Graal or its companion Hallows, because
the essential condition of the analogy must be indubitably
the existence of memorials of the Passion of our Lord.
Of these it is certain that there were none, because other-
wise it is certain that they would be adduced. We are
asked, on the contrary, to assume that a variant liturgical
448
The Light of the Celtic Church
reading, the legend of an historical apostle after passing
under a specific transmutation, and the mythical restitu-
tion of a Welsh King are the first matter in combination
of the complex cycles of literature which are comprised
in the Graal legend. If this hypothesis can be taken
with such high seriousness that we may suppose it put
forward — shall I say ? — as an equivalent by analogy for
that which has offered St. Dominic and the enchanting
fable of a question which should have been put to the
Pope as a real explanation of the Perceval-Graal myth,
it will be sufficient, I think, to deal with it on general
lines rather than by an exhaustive process of criticism in
detail. Let us put aside, in the first place, all that part
which is purely in the region of supposition, and take the
actual facts as things for valuation in the schedule.
Question of Epiclesis or question — as we shall see presently
— of a particular tense, it is obvious that the oriental
terms of consecration, when those prevailed in the West,
were the secret of no particular sanctuary as distinguished
from all other holy places in Britanny, Britain and
Wales. They were catholic to these countries and also
to a great part of that which we understand by Scotia,
Ireland and Gaul. They connect in themselves with
no keepership and with no Hallows. We know that
the Roman rite colonised all these countries, and
that in the course of time it prevailed. But the
period between the public use of the words now in
question and their final abrogation was one of cen-
turies, and although during a portion thereof — ex
hypothesi — they may have been perpetuated in conceal-
ment, there is no doubt that they had fallen into com-
plete desuetude long before the third quarter of the
twelfth century. It is impossible to suppose that there
was at that time any one concerned in their perpetuation
sufficiently to put them forward as a great mystery of
sanctity inherent in the heart of Christianity, and it is
impossible, mystically speaking, that they should carry
this significance. The secret words do not appear in the
449 2 F
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
metrical romance of Joseph as in any sense the material
of romance ; they appear with all the marks of a
particular claim advanced for a special reason and
maintained through more than one generation by the
successive production, firstly, of a prose version of the
early metrical Merlin, and, secondly, by the similar
derivation or independent invention of the Didot Perceval,
which carried on the same tradition, though it seems left
unfinished, perhaps from the standpoint of narrative and
assuredly of the term of its intention. In the second
place two concurrent claims appear, and the second —
which is stronger than the first — abandons the claim in
respect of secret words. It does this so explicitly that it
makes public the words of consecration, by which we are
enabled to see at once how little they could have ever
signified, if indeed it were possible to suppose that these
are the lost words of Graal literature. Moreover, by a
particular fatality, they do not happen to contain the
Epiclesis clause. In its place, as we know so well already,
we have the claim to a super-apostolical succession — as I
have said, a much stronger claim and one for which there
is little precedent in the dubious history of the Celtic
Church. It is out of this pretension that the Galahad
Quest arises, though at a period when the claim itself ap-
pears to have lapsed. We are agreed that, so far as there
is a true story at all, it is that of Galahad, and the ques-
tion of secret words never entered into the heart thereof.
It is, therefore, useless to put forward the assumed fact of
their existence in the Celtic Rite of Institution as some-
thing which is explanatory of the literature. In this
connection it is of importance to remember (a) that the
only prose Perceval which is of any importance mysti-
cally is that which depends from the Book of the Holy
Graal, not from Robert de Borron ; and (b) that the
only metrical romance of Perceval which mystically
may be also important is that of Wolfram. The first
has abandoned the words and the second nearly all
Eucharistic connection. The first puts the Roman dogma
45°
I
The Light of the Celtic Church
of transubstantiation in its most materialised possible
form. It will be seen, therefore, that the Celtic hypo-
thesis fails along what must be regarded as the most
important line. I submit, therefore, that the preten-
sion to a super-apostolical warrant is either part of a
fraudulent scheme of pre-eminence as an argument for
autonomy on the part of the British Church, with the
advisers of a King for its spokesmen, or it belongs to
another order of concealed sentiment and event, the
details and motives of which are wanting on the historical
side of things. In the former case it is not of our con-
cern, and it is explanatory only of one branch in a large
literature ; in the latter, we must go much further, and, if
we can supply the missing events and motives, from
certain hidden sources, we shall be in possession, for the
time being at least, of a provisional explanation concerning
things which are most important in the literature, and —
donee de medio fiat — it must be allowed to hold.
The distinctive note of the Latin Eucharistic Rite is
that, like the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, it
gives the first words of institution thus : Acctyite et man-
ducate ex hoc omnes. Hoc est enim corpus meum ("Take
and eat ye all of this. For this is My body "). Hereto
certain oriental rites added other words which should
read in Latin : Quod pro multis confrangetur (" Which shall
be broken for many "). The Book of the Holy Graal gives :
Venes^ si mangles et chou est li miens cors qui pour vous et
pour maintes autres gens sera livres h martire et a torment —
the substantial equivalent of pro multis confrangetur. Com-
pare the gospel of St. Luke in the Latin Vulgate, which
uses the present tense : quod pro vobis datur.
So far as regards the really trivial question of tense.
The mode of consecration by Epiclesis, or the Invoca-
tion of the Holy Spirit, may be unknown to some of my
readers, and I extract it therefore from the Liturgy of St.
John Chrysostom.
THE PRIEST (saith). — Blessed art Thou, Christ our God, who didst fill
the fishermen with all manner of wisdom, sending down upon them the
45 1
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Holy Ghost, and by them hast brought the whole world into Thy net,
O Lover of men : Glory be to Thee.
J&. Both now and ever, &c.
THE PRIEST (saith). — When the Highest came down and confounded
the tongues, He divided the nations ; when He distributed the tongues
of fire, He called all to unity ; and with one voice we praise the Holy
Ghost.
The Deacon, -pointing to the Holy Bread, saith in a low voice :
DEACON. — Sir, bless the Holy Bread.
The Priest standeth up, and thrice maketh the sign of the Cross on the
Holy Gifts, saying :
PRIEST. — And make this bread the Precious Body of Thy Christ.
DEACON. — Amen. Sir, bless the Holy Cup.
PRIEST. — And that which is in this Cup the Precious Blood of Thy
Christ
DEACON. — Amen. (And pointing with his stole to both the Holy Things]
Sir, Bless.
PRIEST. — Changing them by Thy Holy Ghost.
DEACON. — Amen, Amen, Amen.
PRIEST. — (after a pause) So that they may be for purification of soul,
forgiveness of sins, communion of the Holy Ghost, &c.
I believe that in the Mozarabic Rite, which is thought
to be in near consanguinity with the Celtic, the Epiclesis
formula is used on occasions only. It is missing alto-
gether from the so-called Liturgy of St. Dionysius,
which only survives in the Latin. I should add that
the existence of the clause in the Celtic Rite — whatever
the strength of the inferences — is a matter of speculation,
for the simple reason that no such liturgy is extant.
The other analogies and possibilities are a little attrac-
tive on the surface, and are of the kind which are caught
at rather readily ; but they seize upon a single point
where they can be made to apply, and the other issues
in a long sequence are ignored. The name Cadwaladr
naturally suggests that of Galahad, and on the appeal
to certain laws of permutation, it seems for a moment
justified ; but it is not justified in the legends. The last
King of the Britons had indeed the hallows of his family
by the right of inheritance, but there was no antecedent
keeper whom he was required to heal, and there was no
452
The Light of the Celtic Church
quest to undertake in order that he might secure his
own. But this healing and this quest inhere in the
Graal legend, and are manifestly at the .root of the
design, so that there is no connection possible between
the two cases. Moreover, Cadwaladr is destined by
his legend to return, while it is of the essence of that
of Galahad that he comes back no more. The same
remarks will apply to all traceable instances of here-
ditary Keepership in Celtic families, whatever the object
reserved. It is even more certain that any com-
parison of St. David the Waterman with the Rich
Fisherman who is wounded is highest fantasy ; neither
physically nor symbolically did the Saint suffer any
hurt, but, again, one of the foremost Graal intentions
resides in the King's wounding. The symbolical term
Fisherman signifies the guardian of the Holy Mysteries ;
it can have nothing to do with DEVERUR = Waterman.
We do not know why a great fish is said to have
heralded the birth of the Welsh Apostle. To help
out the argument, we may affirm that he was a guardian
of the Christian Mysteries in the land to which he was
commissioned, but we do not in this manner account,
either in the historical or symbolical sense, for the fishing
of Brons or Alain in the lake, or for the title of Rich
Fisherman applied to the Wardens of the Graal. It is
true that they also were Guardians of Mysteries, but this
is an instance of concurrence and not of derivation. The
Lesser Holy Graal may create a comparison between the
Sacred Vessel and the Sepulchre in which Christ was
laid ; but it does not for this reason institute any
analogy between that vessel and St. David's altar, nor
is the appeal to Wolfram useful except in the opposite
sense, for the Graal stone of the Parsifal, whether or not
it was once in the crown of Lucifer, can tolerate still less
the institution of its likeness to "a sepulchre that was
hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid."
The altar of St. David is an interesting fable of its
type, as preposterous as that of Fecamp, and between
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the tomb of Christ, ex hy-pothesi, transported to Wales,
and the sacramental ciborium likened to the Holy
Sepulchre there is no analogy in any world of corre-
spondences.
It remains therefore that in this literature we have
shown how evil fell upon the House of the Doctrine ;
how it overtook also the Keeper of secret knowledge ;
after what manner he was at length healed ; how the
hidden treasures passed under the care of his saviour ;
and how at the term of all they were removed because
of a fell and faithless time. That would be a very
pleasant scheme of interpretation which could say that
the House of Doctrine was the Celtic Church and that
the wounded Keeper signified the Church in desolation,
but it remains that we must go further in our search for
a key to these mysteries.
If the legend of the Holy Graal were the last light of
the Celtic Church before it expired in proscription, one
would confess that it was glorious in its death. But the
most that we can actually say is that it left elements
which in fine served a better purpose. The Longer Prose
Perceval, the poem of Wolfram, and the sacred and
beautiful Quest of Galahad, these are three records which
bear witness on earth of the secret things which are
declared only in the heavens. There are three taber-
nacles wherein transfiguration takes place.
In the extrinsic Celtic remains, the only substitute
which offers for the great legend of the Holy and Sacra-
mental Cup is an obscure and nameless vessel which is
subject in its latest history to the irreverence of a pedlar,
and this it was deemed worth while to avenge. From
such inefficiencies and trifles it is certain that we must
have recourse, even if for a moment only, to the Glaston-
bury legend, which did invent high fictions to glorify the
British Church. This resource must however in its turn
fail us, because Glastonbury is (a) of very small moment
throughout the Graal literature ; (&) is never the place
of the sacred vessel, for even its most mythical allocations
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The Light of the Celtic Church
— as, for example, Corbenic — cannot be identified there-
with ; and (r) it knows nothing of the second Joseph.
The Book of the Holy Graal does, in one of its codices,
speak of Glastonbury as the burial-place of the elder
Joseph, but it only says Glas in England, for which other
texts substitute Scotland. I doubt very much whether
the Glastonbury legend was intended for more than the
praise of a particular monastery ; it represents Joseph of
Arimathaea as the chief among twelve apostles sent by
St. Philip to Britain, and they carried a phial or phials
containing the Precious Blood. The Graal notion may
have gratified Henry II., who concerned himself with
things Arthurian, but beyond this we have only romance
of history. It is certain in any case that St. David was not
transformed into Joseph of Arimathaea, so far as Glaston-
bury is concerned. He and his apostoli coadjutor 'es, his
staff and his relics, belong to another story brought over
from the Continent when St. David had passed into des-
uetude. Even so, of the Joseph claim, as we have it in
the Graal romances, there is little enough trace in the
historical writers of the time. The abbey of Noirmoutier
in France laid claim to the original possession of Joseph's
body, but it disappeared, or was stolen — as some said —
by the monks of Glastonbury. If it be affirmed that the
second Joseph, who is a creation of the Book of the Holy
Graal, signifies some move in the strange ecclesiastical
game which was played by Henry II., the evidence is in
the opposite direction, so far as it can be said to exist ; it
is obvious that any game would have worked better with
the original apostolical Joseph than with his imaginary
son.
It is time to close these reflections, and there are only
two points which remain, as I have not covenanted to
deal with the minima as a whole. If King Arthur was
enabled to make chalices for ordinary sacramental uses in
official churches from the prototype which he saw in his
vision, being a chalice that was arch-natural wholly, this
occurred after the same manner that the Pilgrim Masons
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
who discovered the body of the Master Builder were
enabled to bring away certain things in substitution for
the secrets that were lost at his death, and there are
thus other analogies than the natural and reasonable
gifts of the Welsh Apostle, but there is no need to dwell
upon them in this place.
The quotation which I have given from the Lesser
Holy Graal raises an interesting point, and, without being
versed in the ecclesiastical side of things, we can all of us
believe that a church so strange as that which once
ministered in Wales had also some curious things belong-
ing to the liturgical world ; but the extract in question
must be read in connection with the original metrical
romance, where the symbolism is expressed differently.
" Aussi sera representee
Cele taule en meinte contree.
Ce que tu de la crouiz m'ostas
Et ou sepulchre me couchas,
C'est Pauteus seur quoi me metrunt
Cil qui me sacrifierunt.
Li dras ou fui envolepez,
Sera corparaus apelez.
Cist veissiaus ou men sane meis
Quant de men cors le requeillis,
Calices apelez sera.
La platine ki sus girra
lert la pierre senefiee
Qui fu deseur moi seelee,
Quant ou sepulchre m'eus mis."
The Blood is therefore mentioned and the analogy is
complete ; it is also gracious and piteous, as the poem
might say itself; and, in fine, it is a true, catholic and
efficacious comparison, which exhibits for those who can
read in the heart one other side of secret Eucharistic
symbolism — even the deep mystery of that mystical
death which is suffered by the Lord of Glory in the
assumption of the veils of bread and wine, that He
may arise into a new life in the soul of the reborn
communicant.
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The Light of the Celtic Church
I do not propose to speak of the original Graal book,
because this is for another consideration, but if there was
a secret liturgy or missal at the root of the legend,
I know that it was not especially Celtic and still less
Welsh especially. Behind the hypothesis of the Epidesis
clause there lies a deeper speculation, for there are traces
of a very wonderful and super-efficacious Office of the
Holy Spirit here and there in the Graal literature, and I
believe that this is one of the keys as to its source in
doctrine. We shall open hereafter another gate which
may bring us back to the Johannine Rite.
I have indicated already that if we accept the
hypothesis of a Pan-Britannic Church, it has no operation
outside the Book of the Holy Graal. Of Chretien's
intention we can discern little, nor does it signify ; it
seems fairly clear that he had no religious, much less
ecclesiastical, implicits. Gautier is in the same position ;
Manessier was merely a story-teller ; Gerbert offers a
few allusions, but we cannot tell where he began, and
his end is a thing frustrated. There is nothing so
remote from all ecclesiastical programme in the official
order as the Lesser Chronicles, and the Parsifal of
Wolfram — which renders to God all that can be offered
in ethics — like another Cain, though not of necessity
rejected, offering the fruits of the earth — and to the
spiritual Caesar seeming to deny nothing — if the Parsifal
has an ulterior motive, it is not of the Celtic Church nor
yet of the House of Anjou, about which methinks that
it protests too much, either for the Provencal Guiot or
the lord of Eschenbach. There remain therefore only
the Greater Chronicles and outside the primary text in
place, which happens to be last in time — here, for the
hypothesis in question, a moment surrendered formally
— I know that of God moveth the High History and
the Galahad of the King of all.
I do not much care on what materials the makers
of the Graal romances may be agreed to have worked,
since it is clear that they imported therein a new spirit.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
If any one should like still to say that Cadwaladr who
went to Rome or Jerusalem is to be identified with
Galahad who went to heaven, they can have it that way
since they so please, understanding that, on my part,
I may reserve my judgment. I know that the one has
suffered a high change before he has passed into the
other. I know that every literature has its antecedents
in some other literature, and that every religion owes
something to a religion that preceded it. Sometimes the
consanguinity is close and sometimes it is very far away.
Only those who affirm that the one accounts for the
other, and this simply and only, seem to be a little
unwise. Christianity arose within Jewry and doctrinally
out of Jewry, but this fact only brings their generic
difference into greater relief. So also the Graal literature
rose up in the Celtic Church ; its analogies are many
therein ; they are many also in folk-lore ; but there
are also as many ways in which the one, as we know
it, does not account for the other, as we have it actually.
The Celtic Church has, however, assisted us to see one
thing more plainly, though we know it on other con-
siderations, namely, that in fine there is but a single quest,
which is that of Galahad. We must make every allowance
for the honest findings of scholars, for whom the Holy
Graal, as it was and it is, has never spoken, for whom
it is only a feeding-dish under a light cloud of imagery,
and by whom it is thought perhaps in their hearts that
the intervention of Christianity in the wild old pagan
myth is on the whole rather regrettable. They turn
naturally to those quarters whence issue the voices
of purely natural life, and therefore they prefer Gawain
and Perceval in his cruder forms, because these speak
their own language. It is to be trusted, and this
devoutly, that they will find more and more evidences
for the maintenance of their particular view. Unmani-
fested now but still discerned darkly, if the true proto-
Perceval should be at length found, that which went
before the Peredur and the English metrical romance,
4S8
The Light of the Celtic Church
and if, as there is no doubt, it should be devoid of all
elements belonging to Graal or quester, our case will be
the better proved which is (i) the natural succession
of the Galahad Quest after the Graal history in its
longer recension; (2) the succession of Perceval in the
sequence of Robert de Borron, but rather as the scion of a
dubious legitimacy ; (3) the introduction of the late prose
Perceval le Gallois as a final act of transmutation in
the Anglo-Norman cycle, which so far assists our case
that it manifests the unfitness, realised at that period, of
Perceval as he was known by the earlier texts ; (4)
the derivation of the Wolfram Parsifal in part from
Celtic elements, in part from some which are, or may
have been, Teutonic, but also with derivatives through
Provence from Spain.
IV
THE VICTORY OF THE LATIN RITE
I have now put forward the hypothesis of the Celtic
Church as it has never been expressed previously ; I
have diminished nothing, and any contrary inferences
have been proposed so far temperately ; but the issues are
not entirely those of the Graal legend, and in view of
all that comes after a few words in conclusion of this
part may perhaps be said more expressly. It should be
on record, for those who have ears, that the Welsh
Church, with its phantom and figurehead bishops, its
hereditary priesthood, its fighting and sanguinary pre-
lates, and its profession of sanctity as others profess
trades, seems a very good case for those who insist
that the first Christianity of Britain was independent
of St. Augustine, which it was, and very much indeed,
but on the whole we may prefer Rome. When we have
considered all the crazes and heresies, all the pure, pri-
mitive and unadulterated Christianities, being only human
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and therefore disposed to gratitude, it is difficult not to
thank God for Popery. But it would also be difficult
to be so thankful, that is to say, with the same measure
of sincerity, if we were still in the school courses and
belonged officially thereto. I mean to say, although
under all reserves, that there is always some disposition
to hold a fluidic brief for Rome in the presence of the
other assemblies. William Howitt, the historian of
priestcraft a rebours, once said : " Thanks be to God
for the mountains ! " It is well to quote from our
enemies, but not in the sense of our enemies, and
hence I read by substitution the seven hills and the
city built thereon. Let therefore those who will strive
with those who can over the dismembered relics of
apostolical Christianity ; but so far as we are con-
cerned the dead can bury their dead. We have left
the Celtic Church as we have left carved gods. A
Pan-Britannic Church might have been the dream of
one period, and were that so, seeing that it never came to
fulfilment, we could understand why it is that in several
respects the Graal literature has now the aspect of a
legend of loss and now of a legend of to-morrow.
The Anglican Church seems in this sense to recall for
a moment that perverse generation which asked for a
sign and was given the sign of Jonah. It has demanded
apostolical evidences to enforce its own claim and it has
been given the Celtic Church. Let us therefore sur-
render thereto the full fruition thereof. There may
be insufficiencies and imperfect warrants in the great
orthodox assemblies, but in the Celtic Church there is
nothing which we can regret. Gildas and St. Bernard
are eloquent witnesses concerning it. The Latin rite
prevailed because it was bound to prevail, because the
greater absorbs the lesser. On the other hand, and now
only in respect of the legends, let us say lastly that the
ascension of Galahad is, symbolically speaking, without
prejudice to the second coming of Cadwaladr. It does
not signify for our purpose whether Arthur ever lived,
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The Light of the Celtic Church
and if so whether he was merely a petty British prince.
The Graal is still the Graal, and the mystery of the
Round Table is still the sweet and secret spirit of
universal knighthood.
It follows, in fine, that we must go further, and in
the next section, as one who has been in exile among
disjecta membra, like Marius among the ruins of Car-
thage, I shall re-enter into my own patrimony. To
my old friend, Arthur Machen, himself of Caerleon-
upon-Usk, I owe most of the materials which have
been collated for the presentation of the hypothesis
concerning the Graal and the Celtic Church. He col-
lected them in my interest out of his good heart of
brotherhood, and I trust that in the time to come he
will extend them further in his own.
461
BOOK VIII
MTSTIC ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND
THE ARGUMENT
I. THE INTRODUCTORY WORDS. — The Quest of the
Holy Graal considered as a religious experiment — Counsels
of Perfection in the Quest — Of -poverty, obedience and
virginity — Of -partial success in their absence — Peculiarities
in the election of Galahad — The state of sanctity — The
descent of Grace — Perpetuity of conditions for the experi-
ment— Further as regards virginity in respect of the Quest
— The mystical idea of union — The term of the Quest —
Separation of transubstantiation marvels from the final vision
of the Graal — The experience of Nasciens — Collateral ex-
perience of the Mystics — After what manner grace mani-
fested through the Eucharist — Of a gate of knowledge in
the Eucharist — Declaration of the Graal in its mystic
aspects. II. THE POSITION OF THE LITERATURE DE-
FINED.— A distinction concerning the literature — Of
allegory in the Great Quest — A particular form of de-
velopment in the Graal Legend — The Graal and the Official
Church — The case concerning that Church — The implicits
of the literature as elements of the mystic aspects — The
Recession of the Graal — How this symbol was -perpetuated
from the beginning — A light from the Quest of Guiot —
Meaning of the Stone in the Crown of Lucifer — The Graal
and Eucharistic Wisdom. III. CONCERNING THE GREAT
EXPERIMENT. — The wonder of all sacredness as the term of
Quest — An analogy from Ruysbroeck — Term of the Ex-
periment— External places of the Quest — Of helpers therein
465 2 G
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
— Of Secret Orders — Communication of Divine Substance
— The Channel of the Eucharist — Of Integration in Secret
Knowledge — The Office of the Quests — Of Popular De-
votions in the Church and of such Fatalities — Our Inherit-
ance from the Past — The open Secret of Tradition —
Of things that stand in the way in respect of Christian
Mysticism — Latin Christianity — The true way of Ex-
perience— An eirenicon in doctrine. IV. THE MYSTERY OF
INITIATION. — Of the Graal in its correspondence with in-
stituted Mysteries — The mind of scholarship on this subject
— Analogies from the literary history of Kabalism and
Alchemy — The sacramental message of the Graal — Points
of comparison between Graal literature and other cycles of
books — A distinction on the question of Initiation — The
Hidden Knowledge — An illustration from Masonry — Of a
certain leaven working in the texts of the Graal — Testimony
to the existence of the Great Experiment — The jailure of the
external world — A caution in respect of interpretation—
The indubitable subsurface sense of Graal books. V. THE
MYSTERY OF FAITH. — A first summary of the whole subject
— The Graal Mystery as a declared pageant of the Eucharist
— Its distinctions from the official Sacrament — A profound
symbolism — Of secret memorials — The Five Changes of the
Graal — Of what remains over from the findings of scholar-
ship— The Church teaching on the Eucharist — Limitations
of Graal books — And of books of the Mystics. VI. THE
LOST BOOK OF THE GRAAL. — Suggestion concerning a con-
cealed Liturgy or Mass-Book — Superfluity of this hypothesis
in respect of the present interpretation — General testimony
of the literature to a primordial text — The schedule thereof
— Whether the evidences are applicable to one book — The
results obtained therefrom — Conclusion that the literature
could not have arisen from a single prototype — Of admitted
466
The Argument
and, indisputable 'prototypes — The alleged Latin source —
Southey^s opinion — Statement of the Comte de Tressan —
Middle ground occupied by Paulin Paris — A lesson from
the literature of Alchemy — Of all which remains after
abandoning the hypothesis of a single prototype in the
ordinary sense — Further concerning the implicits and
strange rumours present in Graal literature — Proof that
these were not inventions of romance — Hypothesis of a
Sanctum Graal which contained these elements — The
negative view of its content — The positive view — The
book not seen by those who wrote the romances — The pre-
sumable custodians thereof — The rumours thereof — How
their prevalence does not involve the existence of any book.
VII. THE DECLARED MYSTERY OF QUEST. — Exotics of
the whole subject — Of faith and experience — Errors of the
Mystic Quest — The Open Door — The Gates and their
Wardens — A condition of progress in the Quest — The
declared and the hidden knowledge — Suddenness of the
Graal Wonders — Obiter Dicta — The expression of the
whole Quest after a new manner.
467
BOOK VIII
MTSTIC ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND
I
THE INTRODUCTORT WORDS
SEEING therefore that we have not found in the Celtic
Church anything which suffices to explain the chief im-
plicits of the literature and that the watchwords call
us forward, there remains another method of research,
and of this I will now proceed to make trial. I suppose
that there is no need to exhibit in formal words after
what manner the Quest of the Holy Graal became in
the later texts a religious experiment, and thus justified
the titles from which it began in that story of Robert
de Borron which is the earliest extant history. Any
one who has proceeded so far in the present inquisition
as to have reached these lines — even if he is wholly
unfamiliar with the old treasury of books — will be aware
that the Quest was ruled throughout by the counsels of
perfection. These ruled in fact so strongly as to have
reached that stage when two of them were implied only
—that is, they were taken for granted : (#) Voluntary
poverty, for the knights possessed nothing, and what-
ever came into their hands was distributed there and
then ; (£) entire obedience, in dedication to the pro-
posed term, and all the ships of the world burnt with
fire behind them ; when change came there followed
complete avortement, as that of Gawain in the Great
Quest ; (c] perpetual chastity, as the only counsel
469
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
which stands declared — and in this connection it will
be remembered that Bors returned to Logres. The
zeal of these counsels does not appear — as I have said —
to guarantee election utterly : it is rather the test of
merit. And I have said also that there may be a
certain success without their fulfilment in the absolute
degree. In the Longer Prose Perceval Gawain received
signal favours, yet it is admitted that he was want-
ing in purity, and hence he could make no response
when the questionable mystery appeared once in his
presence. The King also beheld the arch-natural
Eucharist on the manifested side thereof: but Perceval
alone possessed the plenary qualifications in this text. On
the other hand, in the story of stories there was one
who surpassed him, but not so utterly that they were
otherwise than classed together as companions of the
Quest. The distinction seems to have been that Gala-
had dissolved temptation, as one more than human.
Perceval carried within him the latent desires of the
body, and after beholding the Graal he required the
purgation of a hermit's life before he entered into the
true inheritance of those thrones which are above. By
some of my fellowship in research it has been said most
truly, though they do not understand Galahad, that the
haut prince was just as fit for the Quest at its beginning
as he was at its end. Now, that is exactly the sign of
perfect vocation — of election as well as calling ; the
criterion of those who are meant for heaven is that
they might ascend thither at any moment. Another
test of Galahad was that he knew really from the
beginning the whole mystery by the tradition thereof.
I am enumerating here the general implicits of the
subject which should be latent in the minds of those
whom I address ; they do not constitute a question
put forward for sifting with a view to a settlement,
but of fitness and power to see — of the verus certusque
intuitus animi) in some degree and proportion. This
being passed by those who can suffer the ruling, it
470
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
will be obvious that the religious experiment about
which I begin to speak can depend only from two con-
siderations: (i) the attainment of the sanctified state in
the Questing Knights, and (2) the descent of a peculiar
Grace upon them. I enumerate both points, though it is
obvious that one of them has in another form but now
passed through review, but in dealing with a very diffi-
cult subject it is necessary to look at it in more than a
single light, and I wish to make it clear that the specifics
of the sanctified state — by which I mean the counsels of
perfection — are not things that are determined in the
given case by a trend of thought and emotion at the
given period, and are not therefore to be dismissed as
a presentation of the ascetic life or as the definition
of canons which have now passed into desuetude.
The same experiment always demands the same con-
ditions for its success, and to set aside these is really
to renounce that, or in this instance it is to reject the
experiment as one of the old ecstasies which never came
to a term. On the contrary, the experiment of sanctity
is always approximating to a, term, and the measure of
success is the measure of zeal in its pursuit. I propose
therefore to look a little closer at one of the counsels of
perfection. The essential point regarding the condition
of virgo intacta — not in respect of the simple physical
fact, which has no inherent sanctity, but in respect of
its conscious acceptance at what cost soever — is that
there neither was nor can be a more perfect symbol of
the prepared matter of the work. It is the analogy
in utter transcendence of that old adage : Mens sana in
corpore sano, and its nearest expression is : Anlma imma-
culata in corpore dedicate, ex hoc nunc et usque^ &c. In
other words, the banns of marriage in the higher degrees
cannot be proclaimed till the contracting parties are war-
ranted in their respective orders to have that proportion
and likeness apart from which no union could be effected.
The consummated grade of sanctity is an intimate state
of union, and the nearest analogy thereto is found in
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
human marriage ; as the latter presupposes in the sac-
ramental order an antecedent or nominal purity, and
has for its object the consecration of intercourse which
in its absence is of the animal kind, so the antecedent
condition in sanctity — or the life of perfect dedication
— is in correspondence with the state of virgo intacta.
I need not say that because these things are analogical
so the discourse concerning them partakes of the
language of symbolism or that the state itself is a
spiritual state. Entire obedience involves no earthly
master ; voluntary poverty is of all possibility in a
palace, and the law would not deny it at the head-
quarters of an American Trust ; as regards chastity,
that is guaranteed to those who receive the sacrament
of marriage worthily, and it is to be noted that this
sacrament differs from baptism, which is administered
once and for all, while marriage, in the effects thereof,
is administered in continuity as an abiding presence
and a grace abounding daily so long as its covenants
are observed. On the other hand, the perpetuity of
spiritual chastity in the life within does not mean of
necessity that man or woman has never known flesh
in the physical order. Galahad in the story had the
outward signs as well as the inward grace. His Quest
was an allegory throughout and sometimes the allegorical
motive obtrudes into the expressed matter, which is an
error of art.
The term which is proposed in the Quest, as the con-
sideration thereof, will be best given in the words of the
Quest itself. " Now at the yeres ende and the self daye
after Galahad had borne the croune of gold, he arose up
erly and his felawes, and came to the palais, and sawe to
fore hem the holy vessel, and a man knelynge on his
knees in lykenes of a Bisshop that had aboute hym a
grete felaushyp of Angels as it had ben Jhesu Cryst
hym self, & thenne he arose and beganne a masse of oure
lady. And whan he cam to the sacrament of the masse,
and had done, anone he called Galahad and sayd to hym
472
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
come forthe the servaunt of Jhesu Cryst and thou shalt
see that thou hast moche desyred to see, & thenne he
began to tremble ryght hard, when the dedely flesshe
beganne to beholde the spyrytuel thynges. Thenne he
held vp his handes toward heuen, and sayd lord I thanke
the, for now I see that that hath ben my desyre many a
daye. Now blessyd lord wold I not lenger lyue yf it
myghte please the lord, & there with the good man
tooke our lordes body betwixe hys handes, and profered
it to Galahad, and he receyued hit ryghte gladly and
mekely. . . . And there with he kneled doune to fore
the table, and made his prayers, and thenne sodenly his
soule departed to Jhesu Crist and a grete multitude of
Angels bare his soule vp to heuen," &c. In this citation
the most important point for our purpose at the living
moment rests neither in that which it expresses nor in
that which it conceals : it is assumed and realised that
such a term is always hidden because it always exceeds
expression, and is the closer veiled wherein it is announced
the most. But here was the consummation of all, and
here was that more open seeing than was granted at
Corbenic wherein all the outward offices of things arch-
natural were set aside utterly. Herein therefore was no
vision of transubstantiation changes, and as evidence that
this was of concert and not of chance, I have the same
report to make concerning the Longer Prose Perceval;
when the questing knight comes to his own therein no
signs and wonders are connected with the Holy Graal.
As regards the vision itself, we may remember the words
of Nasciens when he attempted to penetrate the secrets
within the new Ark of the Covenant. " Et Nasciens
dist que il Fen descouverroit tant comme nule mortieus
langue em porroit descouvrir, ne deveroit. Je ai, dist-il,
veut la coumenchaille dou grant hardiment, Pocoison des
grans savoirs, le fondement des grans religions, le des-
sevrement des grans felonnies, la dtmoustranche des grans
mierveilles, la mervelle de totes les altrez mervelles, la
fin des bontes et des gentilleces vraies" This extract
473
'The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
from the Book of the Holy Graal is thus rendered in the
halting measures of Lovelich :
" ' I have sein,' quod the sire Nasciens,
' Of alle manere of wykkednesse the defens ;
Of alle boldnesse I have sene the begynneng,
Of all wittes the fowndyng.
I have sein the begynneng of Religeown
And of alle bowntes, bothe al & som,
And the poyntes of alle gentrye,
And a merveil of alle merveilles certeinlye.' ':
Other masters have expressed the same wonder in other
terms, which are the same — as, for example : qua dam
-prtelibatio teternce vittet gustus et suavitas spiritualis,
mentis in Deum suspensa elevatio, &c.
The qualifications of Galahad and Perceval in the Great
Quest are not therefore things which are the fashion of a
period, like some aspects of what is termed the ascetic
mind, but they obtain from Aleph to Tau, through all
grades of expression. Those who speak of the ethical
superiority of the Parsifal are saying that which, in all
moderation and tenderness, signifies that they are still
learning the elements of true discipline.
I have now dealt with the indispensable warrants of
the state, and the mode of the descent of Grace belongs
to the same category ; it was a manifestation to the
spiritual flowers of Christian knighthood through the
Eucharist — the form of symbolism made use of for this
purpose being that of transubstantiation. I have already
set down what I believe to be the Divine Truth on this
subject, but here again we must as our research proceeds
approach it from various standpoints ; and, for the rest,
it must be obvious that of all men I at least should
have no call imposed on me to speak of the Holy Graal
were it not for its connection with the Blessed Sacrament.
It is the passage of the putative reliquary into the Chalice
of the Eucharist, the progressive exaltation of its cultus and
the consequent transfiguration of the Quest which have
substituted insensibly a tale of eternity for a mediaeval
474
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
legend of the Precious Blood ; in place of the Abbey of
Fecamp, we have Corbenic and Mont Salvatch shining in
the high distance, and where once there abode only the
suggestion of some relative and rather trivial devotion,
we have the presence of that great sign behind which
there lies the Beginning and the End of all things.
The romance-writers, seeking in their symbolism a
reduction to the evidence of the senses, selected and
exaggerated the least desirable side of Eucharistic dogma ;
but we have no occasion to dispute with them on that
score, seeing that — for the skilled craftsman — any
material will serve in the purposes of the Great Work.
The only point which stands out for our consideration
is that — following the sense of all doctrine and the testi-
mony of all experience — the gate by which faith presses
into realisation is the gate of that Sacrament from which
all others depend — of that Sacrament the institution of
which was the last act of Christ and the term of His
ministry ; thereafter He suffered only until He rose in
glory. When therefore the makers of the Graal books
designed to show after what manner, and under what
circumstances, those who were still in flesh could behold
the spiritual things and have opened for them that door
of understanding which, according to the keepers of the
Old Law, was not opened for Moses, they had no
choice in the matter, and it is for this reason that they
represent the Bread of Life and the Chalice of the Ever-
lasting Testament as being lifted up in the secret places
of Logres, even in the palais esperiteux.
Hereof are the mystic aspects of the Great Quest, and
it seems to follow that the secret temple of the soul was
entered by those who dwelt in the world of romance as
by those in the world of learning. The adepts of both
schools were saying the same thing at the same period,
seeing that during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
which moved and had their being under the wonderful
aegis of the scholastic mind, there began to arise over the
intellectual horizon of Europe the light of another ex-
475
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
perience than that of spiritual truth realised intel-
lectually ; this was the experience of the mystic life,
which opened — shall we say? — with the name of Bona-
ventura and closed for the period in question with that
of Ruysbroeck.
II
THE POSITION OF THE LITERATURE DEFINED
The books of the Holy Graal are either purely of
literary, antiquarian and mythological interest, or they
are more. If literary, antiquarian and mythological only,
they can and should be left to the antiquaries, the critics
and the folk-lore societies. But if more it is not im-
probable antecedently, having regard to the subject, that
the excess belongs to the mystics, and to those generally
who recognise that the legends of the soul are met with
in many places, often unexpectedly enough, and wherever
found that they have issues outside that which is under-
stood commonly and critically by the origin of religious
belief. The ascetic and mystic element — to repeat the
conventional description — outside the considerations
which I have put forward, is for those of all importance,
and it is otherwise and invariably the only thing that
is really vital in legends. The impression which is left
upon the mind after the conclusions of the last sub-section
is assuredly that the " divine event " is not especially, or
not only, that " towards which creation moves," but a term,
both here and now, towards which souls can approximate
and wherein they can rest at the centre. Over the thres-
hold of the Galahad Quest we pass as if out of worlds of
enchantment, worlds of faerie, worlds of the mighty
Morgan le Fay, into realms of allegory and dual mean-
ing, and then — transcending allegory — into a region
more deeply unrealised ; so also, after having reflected
on the external side of the romances and the preliminary
analogies of things that are inward, we pass, as we approach
476
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
the end of our research, into a world of which nothing
but the veils and their emblazonments have been so far
declared. No other romances of chivalry exhibit the
characteristics which we discern in the perfect and rectified
books of the Holy Graal, but if we do not know
categorically why romance came to be the vehicle for one
expression of man's highest experience, we have reasons
— and more than enough — to determine that it was not
automatic, not arbitrary, and yet it was not fortuitous ; it
came about in the nature of things by the successive ex-
altation of a legend which had the capacity for exaltation
into transcendence. The genesis of the story of Gala-
had is not like the institution of the ritual belonging to
the third craft grade in Masonry, which seems without
antecedents that are traceable in the elements — actual or
symbolical — of the early building guilds. By successive
steps the legend of the Graal was built till it reached that
height when the hierarchies could begin to come down
and the soul of Galahad could go up. It is important for
my own purpose to establish this fact, because in that which
remains to be said I must guard against the supposition
that a conventional secret society or a sect took over the
romances, edited them and interpenetrated the texts with
mystic elements. That is the kind of hypothesis which
occult interests might have manufactured sincerely enough
in the old days, and it would have had a certain warrant
because there is ample evidence that this is exactly the
kind of work which in given cases was performed by the
concealed orders. The Graal, as a literature, came into
other hands, which worked after their own manner, and
worked well.
There is another fact which is not less important
because of certain tendencies recognisable in modern
criticism. I will mention it only at the moment, that
the reader may be put on his guard mentally ; there is
no single text in the literature which was or could have
been put forward as a veiled pronunciamento against the
reigning Church on the part of any historical sect, heresy,
477
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
or rival orthodoxy. The pure Christianities and the
incipient principles of reform took their quack processes
into other quarters. The voices which spoke in the
books of the Holy Graal as no voices had ever spoken in
romance were not putting forward a mystery which was
superior specifically to the mysteries preserved by the
official Church. They trended in the same direction as
the highest inquisitions move, and that invariably. The
most intelligent of all the heresies is only the truth of
the Church foreshadowed or travestied. The reforms of
the Church are only its essential lights variously refracted.
Even modern science, outside the true prerogatives of
its election as our growing physical providence, is the
notification of the things which do not ultimately matter
in comparison with the science of the Church, which is
that of the laws ruling in the search after the eternal
reality. The Graal at its highest is the simulacrum or
effigy of the Divine Mystery within the Church. If she,
as an institution, has failed so far — and as to the failure
within limits there is no question — to accomplish the
transmutation of humanity, the explanation is not merely
that she has been at work upon gross and refractory
elements — though this is true assuredly — but that in the
great mystery of her development she has still to enter
into the fruition of her higher consciousness. Hereof
are the wounds of the Church, and for this reason she
has been in sorrow throughout the ages.
So far I have defined, but in one sense only, the
position of the literature. It remains to be said that
what I have termed from the beginning the major
implicits, as they project vaguely and evasively upon
the surface, are integral elements of the mystic aspects.
But they must be taken here in connection with one
feature of the quests which is in no sense implied, because
this will concern us in a very important manner in the
next book. I refer to the Recession of the Graal. I
have no need to remind any one after so many enumera-
tions that the final testimony of all the French Quests
478
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
is that, in one or another way, the Graal was withdrawn.
It is not always by a removal in space ; it is not always
by assumption to heaven. In the German cycle the
Temple was inaccessible from the beginning and the
Palladium never travelled, till — once and for all — it
was carried in a great procession to the furthest East.
Wolfram left it in primeval concealment ; but this did
not satisfy one of the later poets, who married — as we
have seen — the Graal legend to that of Prester John.
Now, it might be more easy to attain translation, like
St. Paul, than to find that sanctuary in India where, by
the assumption, it must be supposed to remain. But
having regard to the hidden meaning which seems to
lie behind Wolfram's source he was within the measures
of his symbolism when he left the Graal at Mont Sal-
vatch, not removing to the East that which in his case
did not come therefrom. Albrecht, who tells of the
transit, first took the precaution to change the hallowed
object. I believe that the testimony to removal was
inherent to the whole conception from the beginning,
concurrently with the Secret Words, and that the latter
were reflected at a later period into the peculiar claim
concerning sacerdotal succession. They were all Euchar-
istic in their nature. The testimony itself is twofold,
because, in addition to the withdrawal of the Living
Sign, the texts tell us of the House that is emptied of
its Hallows ; these are in particular the Longer Prose
Perceval and the Quest of Galahad. There is also
Manessier's conclusion of the Conte del Graal, but
no very important inference is to be drawn therefrom.
One of our immediate concerns will be to find the
analogies of this prevailing conception elsewhere in the
world ; the present study of Graal mystic aspects is
simply preliminary thereto, and the eduction of the
significance behind the major implicits. It is at this
point curiously that one element of Graal history which
has been somehow ascribed to Guiot comes to our
'assistance, providing an intermediary between the litera-
479
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
ture of mystical romance and — as we shall learn — the
obvious text-books of the secret schools. It opens, I
think, strange vistas of intellectual wonder and enchant-
ment. We have heard already that the Stone which is
identified with the Graal in Wolfram was at one time
a stone in the crown of Lucifer, and seeing that, accord-
ing to other legends, the thrones left vacant by the
fallen angels are reserved for human souls, it becomes
intelligible why the Graal was brought to earth and what
is signified by the mystic jewel. The Stone in the
crown of Lucifer symbolises the great estate from which
the archangel fell. It was held by the fathers of the
Church that, when still in the delights of Paradise,
Lucifer was adorned by all manner of precious stones,
understanding mystically of him what in the text of
the prophet Ezekiel is said literally of the Prince of
Tyre : In deliciis paradisi Deifuisti ; omnis lapis preciosus
operimentum tuum : sardius, topazius, et jaspis^ chryso-
lithus, et onyx, et beryllus, sapphirus, et carbunculus^ et
smaragdus — nine kinds of stones, according to Gregory
the Great, because of the nine choirs of angels. And
Bartolocci, the Cistercian, following all authorities, under-
stands these jewels to signify the knowledge and other
ornaments of grace with which Lucifer was adorned in
his original state as the -perfecta similitude Dei — in other
words, the light and splendour of the hidden knowledge.
It follows on this interpretation ( i ) That the Graal Stone
in no sense belongs to folk-lore; (2) that it offers in
respect of its origin no connection with the idea of
physical maintenance, except in the sense that the things
which sustain the soul maintain also the body, because
the panis quotidianus depends from the panis supersub-
stantialis ; (3) that the wisdom of the Graal is an
Eucharistic wisdom, because the descent of a'n arch-
natural Host takes place annually to renew the virtues
thereof; (4) that the correspondence of this is, in other
versions of the legend, the Host which is consecrated
extra-validly by the Secret Words, and so also the cor-
480
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
respondence of the Stone which comes from heaven is
the Cup which goes thereto; but in fine (5) that the
jewel in the crown of Lucifer is called also the Morning
Star, and thus it is not less than certain that the Graal
returns whence it came.
Ill
CONCERNING THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
If there be any who at this stage should say that the
term of the Holy Graal is not the end of the mysteries —
which is the Vision that is He — I would not ask him to
define the distinction, but the term in either case, for that
which must be said of the one is said also of the other,
and if he understands the other it is certain that he
understands the one. The Quest of the Holy Graal is
for the wonder of all sacredness, there where no sinner
can be. The provisional manifestation is in the Longer
Prose Perceval and the full disclosure — not as to what it
is but as to what it is about — is in the romance of
Galahad. If, after the haut 'prince had given his final
message, " Remember of this unstable world," he had
been asked what he had seen which led him to exercise
his high prerogative and call to be dissolved, he might
have answered : Visi sunt oculi mei salutare suum, yet he
would have said in his heart : " Eye hath not seen." But
it has been divined and foretasted by those who have
gone before the cohorts of election in the life that is
within and have spoken with tongues of fire concerning
that which they have seen in the vista. One approxi-
mation has told us that it is the eternal intercourse of the
Father and the Son wherein we are enveloped lovingly by
the Holy Spirit in that love which is eternal. And him
who said this the wondering plaudits of an after-age
termed the Admirable Ruysbroeck. He knew little Latin
and less Greek, and, speaking from his own root, he
had not read the authorities ; but he had stood upon
481 2 H
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that shore where the waves of the divine sea baptize the
pilgrim, or in that undeclared sphere which is Kether, the
Crown of Kabalism, whence those who can look further
discern that there is A in Soph Aour> the Limitless Light.
The equivalent hereof is in that which was said by Jesus
Christ to the men of the Quest : " My Knyghtes and my
seruantes & my true children whiche ben come oute of
dedely lyf in to spyrytual lyf I wyl now no longer hyde
me from yow, but ye shal see now a parte of my secretes
& of my hydde thynges." And in the measure of that
time they knew as they were known in full, that is, by
participation in, and correspondence with the Divine
Knowledge. Meat indeed : it is in that sense that
Christ gave to Galahad " the hyghe mete " and " then he
receyved his saueour." The monk who wrote this might
have exhausted all the language of the schools, but he
also knew little Latin and less Greek, if any, so he said
only of the communicants : " They thoughte it soo swete
that hit was merveillous to telle." And of Galahad he
said later : " He receyued hit ryghte gladly and mekely."
But yes, and that is fuller and stronger than all the
eloquence of the Master of Sentences. It is the voice of
Ruysbroeck — but further simplified — saying the same
thing: "And he tastes and sees, out of all bounds, after
God's own manner, the riches which are in God's own
self, in the unity of the living deep, wherein He has
fruition of Himself, according to the mode of His un-
created essence."
This is the Great Term of the Great Experiment
followed by the Mystic Schools, and here by its own
words the Graal legend is expressed in the terms of this
Experiment. It has been made, within their several
measures, by all churches, sects and religions, for which
reason I have said elsewhere that the skilled craftsman
does not quarrel with his tools. All materials are
possible ; the ascent to eternal life can be made by any
ladder, assuming that it is fixed in the height ; there is
no need to go in search of something that is new and
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Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
strange. And those who can receive this assurance will,
I think, understand why it is that the Church of a man's
childhood — assuming that it is a Church and not a
latitudinarian chapel of ease or a narrow and voided sect
— may and perhaps should contain for him the materials
of his work, and these he will be able to adapt as an
efficient craftsman. There is neither compulsion nor
restraint, but the changes in official religion, the too
easy transition from one to another kind, taking the
sanctuaries as one takes high grades in Masonry, are a
note of weakness rather than a pledge of sincerity, or of
the true motive which should impel the soul on its quest.
There are, of course, many helpers of that soul on
that progress :
" We, said the day and the night
And the law of gravitation ;
And we, said the dark and the light
And the stars in their gyration ;
But I, said Justice, moving
To the right hand of the Throne ;
And I, said Fate, approving ;
I make thy cause mine own."
Among these there are certain of the secret orders —
those, I mean, which contain the counterparts of the
Catholic tradition — and it is necessary to mention them
here because of what follows. They offer no royal road,
seeing that such roads there are none ; but they do in
cases shorten some of the preliminaries, by developing
the implicits of a man's own consciousness, which is the
setting of the prepared postulant on the proper path.
There are, of course, some who enter within them having
no special call, and these see very little of that which lies
behind their official workings, just as there are many who
have been born within the Church, as the body of Christ,
but have never entered into the life which is communi-
cated from the soul of Christ. They remain the children
of this world, participating — as we hope — according to
their degree, in so much of grace and salvation as is
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
possible at the particular time. There are others who,
out of all time, have received a high election, and for
them the subject is often — in its undivided entirety —
found resident in that state of external religious life in
which it has pleased God to call them.
The Secret Doctrine in the religions equally and the
schools is that of the communication of Divine Substance.
I speak of it as secret in both cases, though it is obvious
that in the official church there is no instituted reservation
or conscious concealment on any point of doctrine or
practice ; but the language of the heights is not the
language of the plains, and that which is heard in the
nooks, byways and corners, among brakes and thickets,
is not the voice of the rushing waters and the open sea.
That is true of it in the uttermost which was said long ago
by Paracelsus : Nihil tarn occultum erit quod non revela-
bitur ; but as there are few with ears to hear, it remains
a voice in the wilderness crying in the unknown tongue.
We know only that, according to high theology, the Divine
Substance is communicated in the Eucharist — normally
in the symbolical manner, but, in cases, essentially and
vitally according to the true testimonies. It is therefore
as if the elements were at times consecrated normally and
at times by other words, more secret and efficient arch-
naturally. Then the enchantments terminate which are
the swoon of the sensitive life in respect of the individual,
who enters into real knowledge — the soul's knowledge
before that supervened which is termed mystically the fall
into matter. The Great Experiment is therefore one of
reintegration in the secret knowledge before the Fall, and
when, or if, the Holy Graal is identified with the stone in
the crown of Lucifer, that which is indicated thereby is (#)
the perpetuation of this secret knowledge, and (&) that
under all circumstances there is a way back whence we
came. So close also those times of adventure which —
among other things and manifold — are the life of external
activity governed by the spirit of the world, and this is
accomplished by taking the great secret into the heart
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Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
of the heart, as if the Blessed Sacrament, truly and
virtually, into the inmost being.
Of such is the office of the Quests, but it is understood
that it is not of my concern to enumerate these particulars
as present consciously in the minds of the old monastic
scriptores, who wrote the greatest of the books ; they spoke
of the things which they knew ; without reference or
intention they said what others had said of the same
mysteries, and the testimony continued through the
centuries. The story of the assumption of Galahad
draws into romance the hypothesis of the Catholic Church
concerning the term of all sanctity manifested ; in both
it is attained through the Eucharist. I mean to say
that this is, by the hypothesis, the normal channel of the
Divine Favour, and the devotion which was shown by the
saints to the Sacrament of the Altar was not like the
particular, sentimental disposition in minds of piety to
the Precious Blood or the Heart of Jesus. Concerning
these exercises I have no call to pronounce, but among
the misjudgments on spiritual life in the Roman com-
munion has been the frittering of spiritual powers in the
popular devotion. If the Great Mysteries of the Church
are insufficient to command the dedication of the whole
world, then the world is left best under interdict, just as
no pictures at all are better than those which are bad in
art, and no books than those which are poor and trivial.
There is one point more, because here we have been
trending in directions which will call for more full con-
sideration presently. I have mentioned Secret Orders, and
I cannot recall too early that any Secret Tradition — either
in the East or the West — has been always an open secret
in respect of the root-principles concerning the Way, the
Truth and the Life. We are only beginning, and that
by very slow stages, to enter into our inheritance from
the past ; and still perhaps in respect of the larger part
we are seeking far and wide for the mystic treasures of
Basra. It is therefore desirable to remember that the
great subjects of preoccupation are all at our very doors.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
One reason, of which we shall hear again in another con-
nection, is because among the wise of the ages, in whatso-
ever regions of the world, I do not think that there has been
ever any difference of opinion about the true object of
research ; the modes and form of the Quest have varied,
and that widely, but to a single point have all the ways
converged. Therein is no change or shadow of vicissi-
tude. We may hear of shorter roads, and we might say
at first sight that such a suggestion must be true indubit-
ably ; but in one sense it is rather a convention of lan-
guage and in another it is a commonplace which tends to
confuse the issues. It is a convention of language, because
the Great Quests are not pursued in time or place, and it
would be just as true to say that in a journey from the
circumference to the centre all roads are the same length,
supposing that they are straight roads. It is a common-
place, because if any one should enter the byways, or
return on his path and restart, it is obvious that he must
look to be delayed. Furthermore, it may be true that
all paths lead ultimately to the centre, and that if we
descend into hell there may be still a way back to the
light : yet in any house of right reason the issues are too
clear to consider such extrinsic possibilities.
On this and on any consideration, we have to lay
down one irrevocable law — that he who has resolved-
setting all things else aside — -to enter the path of the
Quest must look for his progress in proportion as he
pursues holiness for its own sake. He who in the Secret
Orders dreams of the adeptship which they claim, ex
hypothesiy to impart to those who can receive, and who'
does not say sanctity in his heart till his lips are cleansed,
and then does not say it with his lips, is not so much
far from the goal as without having conceived regarding it.
Now, it is precisely this word sanctity which takes us
back, a little unintentionally, to the claim of the Church,
and raises the question whether we are to interpret it
according to the mind of the Church or another mind.
My answer is that I doubt if the Great Experiment was
486
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
ever pursued to its term in Christian times on the part
of any person who had once been incorporated by the
mystical body but subsequently had set himself aside
therefrom. When the Quest of the Holy Graal was in
fine achieved, there were some who, as we know, were
translated, but others became monks and hermits ; they
were incorporated, that is to say, by the official annals
of sanctity. I am dealing here with what I regard as
a question of fact, not with antecedent grounds, and the
fact is that the Church has the Eucharist. It may in
certain respects have hampered Christian Mysticism by
the restriction of its own consciousness so especially to
the literal side ; it may, on the historical side, have
approached too often that picture of a certain King of
Castle Mortal, who sold God for money ; it may in
this sense have told the wrong story, though the elements
placed in its hands were the right and true elements.
But not only is it certain that because of these elements
we have to cleave as we can to the Church, but — speak-
ing as a doctor dubitantium — I know that the Church
Mystic on the highest throne of its consciousness does
not differ in anything otherwise than per accidentia —
or alternatively, the prudence of expression — from formal
Catholic doctrine. It can say with its heart of know-
ledge what the ordinary churchman says with his lips
of faith ; the Symbolum remains ; it has not taken on
another meaning ; it has only unfolded itself, like a
flower, from within. The Christian Mystic can there-
fore recite his Credo in unum Deum by clause and by
clause, including in unam sanctam catholic am et apos-
tolicam ecdesiam, and there is neither heresy in the
construction nor Jesuitry in the arrive -pens'ee. Above
all, the path of the mystic does not pass through the
heresies. It has seemed worth while to make this plain,
because the Holy Graal is the Catholic Quest drawn into
romance.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
IV
THE MTSTERT OF INITIATION
The Mystic Aspects of the Graal legend having been
developed up to this stage, the question arises whether
they have points of correspondence with any scheme
of the Instituted Mysteries, whether any element which
is present in the romances can be regarded as a faint and
far off reflection of something which at that time was
known and done in any secret schools. The possibility has
presented itself already to the mind of scholarship, which,
having performed admirable work in the study of the
Graal texts, is still in search of a final explanation con-
cerning them. The shadow of the old Order of the
Temple has haunted them in dreams fitfully, and they
have lingered almost longingly over vague imagined re-
flections of the Orgies of Adonis and Tammuz. As
behind the Christian symbolism of the extant literature
there spreads the whole world of pagan folk-lore, sc-
at least antecedently — there might be implied also some
old scheme of the epopts. It seems permissible there-
fore to offer an alternative, under proper judgments of
reserve, as something which — if otherwise considerable
— may be held tentatively until later circumstances of
research either lead it into demonstration or furnish
a fitting substitute. The Graal legends are comparable
to certain distinct literatures with which the theory here
put forward will connect them by a twofold con-
sanguinity of purpose. Scholarship had scarcely troubled
itself with the great books of Kabalism till it was found
or conceived that they could be made to enforce the
official doctrines of Christianity. Many errors of enthu-
siasm followed, but the books of the mystery of Israel
became in this manner the public heritage of philosophy,
and we are now able to say after what manner it enters
into the general scheme of mystic knowledge. The
488
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
literature of alchemy, in like manner, so long as it was
in the hands of certain amateurs of infant science and its
counterfeits, remained particular to themselves, and out-
side a questionable research in physics it had no office or
horizon until it was discovered or inferred that many
curious texts of the subject had been written in a Ian- :
guage of subterfuge, that in place of a metallurgical
inteiest it was concerned in its way with the keeping of '
spiritual mysteries. There were again errors of enthu-
siasm, but a corner of the veil was lifted. Now, it is
indubitably the message of the Graal that there is more -
in the Eucharist than is indicated by the sufficing graces ^
imparted to the ordinary communicant, and if it is
possible to show that behind this undeclared excess there
lies that which has been at all times sought by the Wise,
that est in sacramento quicquid qu&runt sapientes, then the
Graal literature will enter after a new manner into our
heritage from the past, and another corner of the veil
will be lifted on the path of knowledge. It will be seen
that the literature — contrary to what it appears on the
surface — is not without points of comparison in other
Christian cycles — that it does not stand exactly alone,
even if its consanguinities, though declared by official
religion, are not entirely before the face of the world but
within the sanctuaries of secret fraternities. To suggest
this is not to say that these stories of old are a defined part
or abstract of any mysteries of initiation ; they are at
most a byway winding through a secret woodland to a
postern giving upon the chancel of some great and
primeval abbey.
Those who have concerned themselves with the
subject of hidden knowledge will know that the secret
claims have been put forth under all manners of guises.
This has arisen to some extent naturally enough in the
course of the ages and under the special atmosphere of
motives peculiar to different nations. It has also come
about through the institution of multiples of convention
on the part of some who have become in later times the
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
custodians of the mysteries, such wardens having been
actuated by a twofold purpose, firstly, to preserve their
witness in the world, and, secondly, to see that the
knowledge was, as far as might be, kept away from the
world. This is equivalent to saying that the paramount
law of silence has of necessity a permanent competitor
in the law of the sign. We may take the readiest
illustration in the rituals of Craft Masonry. They
contain the whole marrow of bourgeoisie, but they con-
tain also the shadow of the great mysteries revealed
occasionally. The unknown person or assembly which
conceived the closing of the Lodge according to one
of the grades had a set of moral feelings in common
with those of all the retired masters in the craft of
joinery, and a language like a journeyman carpenter, but
this notwithstanding the words of the adepts had passed
over them and they spoke of the Hidden Token as
no one had ever spoken before. That closing gives
the true explanation of the secret which cannot be
told and yet is imparted quite simply ; of that mystery
which has never been expressed and can yet be recited by
the least literate occupant of the chair placed in Wisdom.
Nor does it prove in communication to be anything that
is strictly unfamiliar. And yet the explanation, so far
from making the concealed part of the rite familiar
and a thing of no moment, has built about the conceal-
ment a wall of preservation which has made its real
significance more profound and in the minds of the
adepts more important.
The Graal literature is open to a parallel criticism,
and the result is also the same. Whatever disappoint-
ment may await, in fine, the pursuit of an inquiry like
the present, partly on account of the uncouth presenta-
tion of important symbolism to the mind of the early
romancist, partly by reason of the inherent defect
of romance as a vehicle of symbolism, and more than
either by the fatal hiatus brought about through the loss
of the earliest documents, there is enough evidence to
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Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
show that a very strange leaven was working in the
mass of the texts. Let me add in respect of it, with
all necessary reservations and in no illiberal spirit, that
the quality of this leaven can be appreciated scarcely by
those who are unacquainted (a) with the inward phases
of the life of Christian sanctity during the Middle Ages,
after which period the voices sound uncertain and the
consciousness of experience more remote, and (b) with
the interior working of those concealed orders of which
the Masonic experiment is a part only, and elementary
at that. The most important lights are therefore either
in the very old books or in the catholic motive which
characterises secret rituals that, whether old or not, have
never entered into the knowledge of the outside world.
The testimony is of two kinds invariably — first of all,
to the existence of the Great Experiment and the success
with which, under given circumstances, it can be carried
to its term, and, secondly, to a great failure in respect of
the external world. The one is reflected by the achieved
Quest of the Holy Graal, and the other by the removal
of the Graal. In respect of the one it is as if a great
mystery had been communicated at one time in the
external places, but as if the communication had after-
wards been suspended, the secret had as if died. In
respect of the other, it is as if the House of Doctrine
had been voided. Did these statements exhaust the con-
tent of the alternatives, the testimony might be that of
a sect, but we shall see at the proper time after what
manner they conform to external doctrine, even if the
keepers of that doctrine should themselves be unable
to see the law of the union.
The great literatures and the great individual books
may be often at this day as so many counters or heaps of
letters put into the hands of the mystic, and he inter-
prets them after his own manner, imparting to them that
light which, at least intellectually, abides in himself. I
make this formal statement because I realise that it is
perilous for my position and because it enables me to
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
add that though literatures may be clay in our hands, we
must not suppose that they who in the first place put a
shape of their own kind on the material which they had
ingarnered were invariably conscious that it would bear
that other seal and impression which we set upon it in our
own minds as the one thing that is desirable. It is too
much to suppose that behind the external sense of texts
there was always designed that inward and illusory signi-
ficance which in some of them we seem to trace so in-
dubitably. The Baron de la Motte Fouque once wrote a
beautiful and knightly romance in which a correspondent
discovered a subtle and complete allegory, and the
author, who planned, when he wrote it, no subsurface
meaning, did not less sincerely confess to the additional
sense, explaining in reply that high art in literature is
true upon all the planes. There are certain romances
which are found to connect in this manner with the
mystery of our science — that is to say, in the non-inten-
tional way, and we must only be thankful to discern that
there is the deep below the deep, without pressing inter-
penetration into a formal scheme. It is well to notice this
position and thus go before a criticism which presents
itself rather than calls to be sought out. The books of
the Holy Graal are not exactly of this kind. A text
which says that certain secret words were once imparted
under very wonderful and exceptional circumstances is
certainly obtruding a meaning behind meaning ; another
which affirms that a certain mythical personage was or-
dained secretly, owing to a similar intervention, and was
made thereby the first Bishop of Christendom, manifests
an ulterior motive, or there are no such motives in the
world. And further, when the two great Quests of the
whole literature are written partly in the form of con-
fessed allegory, it is not unreasonable to infer that they
had some such motive throughout ; while, in fine, as their
express, undisguised intention is to show the existence of
an arch-natural Mass, the graces and the mysteries of
which can be experienced and seen by some who are of
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Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
perfect life, then the interpretation which illustrates this
intention by the mystic side of Eucharistic doctrine in
the Church offers a true construction, and its valid criti-
cism is vere dignum et justum £f£> eequum et salutare. I
will pour three cups to the health and coronation of
him who shall discover the speculative proto-Perceval of
primeval folk-lore, yet on the present subject let him and
all other brethren in the holy places of research keep
silence, unless God graces them with agreement. The
unknown writers of the Longer Prose Perceval and the
Quest of Galahad spoke of the Great Experiment as
those who knew something of their theme and bore true
witness on the term of the research.
We know in our own hearts that eternity is the sole
thing which signifies ultimately and great literature should
confess to no narrower horizon. It happens that they
begin sometimes by proposing a lesser theme, but they
are afterwards exalted ; and this was the case with the
Graal books, which were given the early legends of Per-
ceval according to the office of Nature, but afterwards
the legend of Galahad according to the Law of Grace.
THE MTSTERT OF FAITH
We have now reached a certain definite stage in the
high debate and can institute a preliminary summary
of the whole subject. It is known that the mystery of
faith in Christianity is above all things the Eucharist, in
virtue of which the Divine Master is ever present in his
Church and is always communicated to the soul ; but
having regard to the interdictions of our age-long exile
we receive only a substituted participation in the life of
the union. The Graal mystery is the declared pageant
of the Eucharist, which, in virtue of certain powers set
forth under the veil of consecrating words, is in some
way, not indeed a higher mystery than that of the
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
external church, but its demonstration in the transcendant
mode. We have only to remember a few passages in the
Book of the Holy Graal, in the Longer Prose Perceval^ and
in the Quest of Galahad to understand the imputed dis-
tinction as : (a) The communication in the Eucharist
of the whole knowledge of the universe from Aleph to
Tau ; (b) the communication of the Living Christ in
the dissolution of the veils of Bread and Wine ; (c) the
communication of the secret process by which the soul
passes under divine guidance from the offices of this
world to heaven, the keynote being that the soul is taken
when it asks into the great transcendence. This is the
implied question of the Galahad legend as distinguished
from the Perceval question. There are those who are
called but not chosen at all, like Gawain. There are
those who get near to the great mystery but have not
given up all things for it, and of these is Lancelot.
There is the great cohort, like the apocalyptic multitude
which no man can number — called, elected and redeemed
in the lesser ways, by the offices of the external Church —
and of these is the great chivalry of the Round Table.
There are those who go up into the Mountain of the
Lord and return again, like Bors ; they have received the
last degrees, but their office is in this world. In fine,
there are those who follow at a long distance in the
steep path, and of these is the transmuted Perceval of
the Galahad legend. It is in this sense that, exalted
above all and more than all things rarefied into a great
and high quintessence, the history of the Holy Graal
becomes the soul's history, moving through a profound
symbolism of inward being, wherein we follow as we can,
but the vistas are prolonged for ever, and it well seems
that there is neither a beginning to the story nor a
descried ending.
We find also the shadows and tokens of secret
memorials which have not been declared in the external,
and by the strange things which are hinted, we seem to
see that the temple of the Graal on Mont Salvatch is
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Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
not otherwise than as the three tabernacles which it was
proposed to build on Mount Tabor. Among indications
of this kind there are two only that I can mention. As
in the prologue to the Book of the Holy Graal, we have
heard that the anonymous but not unknown hermit met
on a memorable occasion with one who recognised him by
certain signs which he carried, giving thus the unmistak-
able token of some instituted mystery in which both
shared : as in the Longer Prose Perceval we have seen
that there is an account of five changes in the Graal
which took place at the altar, being five transfigurations,
the last of which assumed the seeming of a chalice, but
at the same time, instead of a chalice, was some unde-
clared mystery : so the general as well as the particular
elements of the legend in its highest form offer a mystery
the nature of which is recognised by the mystic through
certain signs which it carries on its person ; yet it is de-
clared in part only and what remains, which is the greater
part, is not more than suggested. It is that, I believe,
which was seen by the maimed King when he looked
into the Sacred Cup and beheld the secret of all things,
the beginning even and the end. In this sense the five
changes of the Graal are analogous to the five natures
of man, as these in their turn correspond to the four
aspects of the Cosmos and that which rules all things
within and from without the Cosmos. I conclude there-
fore that the antecedents of the Cup Legend are (i)
Calix meus quam inebrians est ; (2) the Cup which does
not pass away; (3) the vas insigne electionis. The
antecedent of the Graal question is : Ask, and ye shall
receive. The antecedent of the Enchantment of Britain
is the swoon of the sensitive life, and that of the adven-
turous times is : I bring not peace, but a sword ; I come
to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it
should be enkindled ? The closing of these times is
taken when the Epopt turns at the altar, saying Pax Dei
tecum. But this is the peace which passes understand-
ing and it supervenes upon the Mors osculi — the mystic
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Thomas Vaughan's " death of the kiss " — after which it
is exclaimed truly : " Blessed are the dead which die in
the Lord from henceforth and for ever." It follows
therefore that the formula of the Supernatural Graal is :
Panem ccelestem accipiam ; that of the Natural Graal,
namely, the Feeding Dish, is : Panem nostrum quotidianum
da nobis hodie ; and the middle term : " Man doth not
live by bread alone." I should add : These three there
are one ; but this is in virtue of great and high transmu-
tations. So, after all the offices of scholarship — pursued
with that patience which wears out worlds of obstacles —
it proves that there is something left over, that this some-
thing bears upon its surface the aspects of mystic life,
that hereof is our heritage, and that we can enter and
take possession because other claimants there are none.
The books of the Holy Graal do tell us of a sanctuary
within the sanctuary of Christendom, wherein there are
reserved great sacraments, high symbols, relics that are
of all most holy, and would be so accounted in all the
external ways ; but of these things we have heard other-
wise in certain secret schools. It follows therefore that
we as mystics can lift up our eyes because there is a
Morning Light which we go to meet with exultation,
portantes manipulos nostros. We shall find the paths
more easy because of our precursors, who have cleared
the tangled ways and have set up landmarks and beacons,
by which perchance we shall be led more straightly into
our own, though in their clearing and surveying they did
not at all know that they were working for us.
It is recognised by the Catholic Church that the
Eucharist is at this time the necessity of our spiritual
life, awaiting that great day when our daily bread shall
itself become the Eucharist, no longer that substitute
provided in our material toil and under the offices of
which we die. The body is communicated to the body
that the Spirit may be imparted to the soul. Spiritus
ipse Christi animce infunditur^ and this is the illustration
of ecstasy. But in these days — as I have hinted — it
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Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
works only through the efficacy of a symbol, and this is
why we cannot say in our hearts : A carne nostro caro
Christi inefabile modo sentitur, meaning Anima s-ponsce
ad flenissimam in Christum trans formationem sublimatur.
Hence, whether it is St. John of the Cross speaking of
the Ascent of Mount Carmel or Ruysbroeck of the Hidden
Stone, the discourse is always addressed to Israel in the
wilderness, not in the Land of Promise. Hence also our
glass of vision remains clouded, like the sanctuary ; and
even the books of the mystics subsist under the law of
the interdict and are expressed in the language thereof.
Those of the Holy Graal are written from very far away
in the terms of transubstantiation, presented thaumaturgi-
cally under all the veils of grossness, instead of the terms
of the Epiclesis in the language of those who have been
ordained with the holy oils of the Comforter. In other
books the metaphysics of the Lover and the Beloved have
been rendered in the tongue of the flesh, forgetting that
it bears the same relation to the illusory correspondence
of human unions that the Bread of the Eucharist bears to
material nutriment. The true analogy is in the contra-
distinction between the elements of bodies and minds.
The high analogy in literature is the Supper at the Second
Table in the poem of Robert de Borron. That was a
spiritual repast, where there was neither eating nor drink-
ing. For this reason the symbolic fish upon the table
conveyed to the Warden the title of Rich Fisher, and it is
in this sense — that is to say, for the same reason — that
the saints become Fishers of Men. We shall re-express
the experience of the mystic life in terms that will make
all things new when we understand fully what is implied
by the secret words : Co-o-pertus et absconditus sponsus.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
VI
THE LOST BOOK OF THE GRAAL
We have seen, in considering the claim of the Celtic
Church to recognition as a possible guiding and shaping
spirit of the Graal literature, that one speculation regard-
ing it was the existence in concealment of a particular
book, a liturgy of some kind, preferably a Book of the
Mass. I have no definite concern in the hypothesis, as it
is in no sense necessary to the interpretation which I place
upon the literature ; but the existence of one or more
primordial texts is declared so invariably in the romances
that, on the surface at least, it seems simpler to presume
its existence, and it becomes thus desirable to ascertain
what evidence there is otherwise to be gleaned about
it. As it has been left so far by scholarship, the
question wears almost an inscrutable or at least an
inextricable aspect, and its connection with the mystic
aspects of the Holy Graal may be perhaps rather
adventitious than accidental, but it is introduced here
as a preliminary to those yet more abstruse researches
which belong to the ninth book.
We must in the first place set aside from our minds
the texts which depend from one another, whether the
earlier examples are extant or not. The vanished Quest
of Guiot — priceless as its discovery would be — is not the
term of our research. We must detach further those
obviously fabulous chronicles by the pretence of which
it is supposed that the several quests and histories were
perpetuated for the enlightenment of posterity. No one
is wondering seriously whether the knightly adventures
of the Round Table were reduced into great chronicles
by the scribes of King Arthur's court, for which assur-
ance we have the evidence of the Huth Merlin — among
several deponents. There are other sources which may
be equally putative, but it is these which raise the ques-
498
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
tion, and I proceed to their enumeration as follows :
(i) That which contained the greatest secret of the
world, a minute volume which would lie in the hollow
of a hermit's hand — in a word, the text presupposed by
the prologue to the Book of the Holy Graal ; (2) that which
is ascribed to Master Blihis — the fabulator famosus — by
the Elucidation prefixed to the Conte del Graal ; (3) that
which is called the Great Book by Robert de Borron,
containing the Great Secret to which the term Graal
is referred, a book of many histories, written by many
clerks, and by him communicated apparently to his
patron, Walter Montbeliard ; (4) that which the Count
of Flanders gave to Chretien de Troyes with instructions
to retell it, being the best story ever recited in royal
court ; (5) that which the Hermit Blaise codified with
the help of the secret records kept by the Wardens of
the Graal ; (6) that which the author of the Longer
Prose Perceval refers to the saintly man whom he calls
Josephus ; (7) that which the Jew Flegitanis transcribed
from the time-immemorial chronicles of the starry
heavens.
The palmary problem for our solution is, whether in
the last understanding a mystery book or a Mass book,
these cryptic texts can be regarded as " seven and yet
one, like shadows in a dream" — or rather, as many in-
ventions concerning one document. If we summarise
the results which were obtained from them, we can
express them by their chief examples thus: (i) From
the prototype of the Book of the Holy Graal came
the super-apostolical succession, the ordination of
Joseph II., the dogma of transubstantiation manifested
arch-naturally, and the building of Corbenic as a Castle
of Perils and Wonders girt about the Holy Graal ; (2)
from the prototype of the Elucidation we have the in-
dicible secret of the Graal, the seven discoveries of its
sanctuary, the account of the Rich Fisherman's skill in
necromancy and his protean transformations by magical
art ; (3) from the prototype of Robert de Borron we
499
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
have the Secret Words, by him or subsequently referred
to Eucharistic consecration ; (4) from the prototype of
Chretien we have the history of Perceval le Gallois, so
far as it was taken by him ; (5) from the putative chro-
nicle of Blaise and his scribes, antecedent and concurrent,
we have all that which belongs to the history of Merlin,
the foundation of the Round Table and the Siege
Perilous ; (6) from the prototype of the Longer Prose
Perceval we have Perceval's later history, his great and
final achievements — unlike all else in the literature, more
sad, more beautiful, more strange than anything told
concerning him ; (7) from the prototype of Guiot,
we have the Graal presented as a stone, and with an
ascribed antecedent history which is the antithesis of
all other histories. Had I set up these varying ver-
sions in the form of seven propositions on the gates
of Salerno or Salamanca and offered to maintain their
identity in a thesis against all comers, I suppose that I could
make out a case with the help of scholastic casuistry and
the rest of the dialectical subtleties ; but in the absence of
all motive, and detached as regards the result, I can only
say in all reason that the quests and the histories as we
have them never issued from a single quest or a single
history. We may believe, if we please, that the book of
the Count of Flanders was really the Quest of Guiot,
reducing the sources to six, and a certain ingenuity
— with courage towards precarious positions — may help
us to further eliminations, but the root-difficulty will
remain — that the Quests, as we have them, exclude one
another and so also do some of the histories. It follows
that there were many prototypes, or alternatively that
there were many inventions in respect of the sources.
In respect of the Perceval legends there was the non-
Graal folk-lore myth, which accounts for their root-
matter but not for their particular renderings and
their individual Graal elements ; the nearest approxi-
mation to these, myths and their nearest issue in time
may have been the Quest of Guiot. One general
500
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
source of De Borron was transparently the Evangelium
Nicodemi, complicated by later Joseph legends, including
the tradition of F6camp, but more than all by another
source, of which he had heard at a distance and of which
I shall speak at the close. The Quest of Galahad makes
no claim to a prototype, but it reflects extant manu-
scripts of the Greater Chronicles ; for the rest, its
own story was all important ; it cared nothing for
antecedents, and it is only by sporadic precaution,
outside its normal lines, that it registers at the close
after what manner it pretended to be reduced into
writing. The prototypes of this text are in the annals
of sanctity, except in so far as it reflects — and it does
so indubitably — some rumours which Robert de Borron
had drawn into romance. As regards Galahad himself,
his romance is a great invention derived from the prose
Lancelot. The Longer Prose Perceval is an invention
after another manner ; there is nothing to warrant us
in attaching any credit to the imputed source in
Josephus, but the book drew from many places and
transmuted that which it drew with a shaping spirit ;
it is an important text for those rumours to which I
have referred darkly. It works, like the Quest of
Galahad, in a high region of similitude, and its pre-
tended source is connected intimately with the second
Joseph of the Greater Chronicles.
We are now in a position to deal with a further ascrip-
tion which is so general in the literature and was once
rather widely accepted — namely, that of a Latin source.
It will be noted that this is a simple debate of language
and it leaves the unity or multiplicity of the prototypes an
open question. It is worth mentioning, because it enters
into the history of the criticism of Graal literature.
There is no need to say that it is now passed over by
scholarship, and the first person to reject it was Robert
Southey in his preface to the edition of Sir Thomas
Malory's Morte d* Arthur which passes under his name,
though he had no hand in the editing of the text
501
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
itself. " I do not believe," he says, " that any of these
romances ever existed in Latin, — by whom, or for whom,
could they have been written in that language ? " For
the romances as romances, for Meliadus de Leonnois^
Gyron le Courtois, and so forth, the question has one
answer only, the fact notwithstanding that the prologue
to Gyron draws all the prose tales of the Round Table from
what it terms the Latin Book of the Holy Graal. There
is one answer also for any version of the Graal legend, as
we now know it. Even for that period, the Comte de
Tressan committed a serious absurdity when he affirmed
that the whole literature of Arthurian chivalry, derived
by the Bretons from the ancient and fabulous chronicles
of Melkin and Tezelin, was written in Latin by Rusticien
de Pise, who was simply a compiler and translator into
the Italian tongue and was concerned, as such, chiefly
with the Tristram cycle. At the same time it is possible
to take too extreme a view. In his preface to another
work, Palmerin of England, Southey remarks that " every
reader of romance knows how commonly they were
represented as translations from old manuscripts," and
that such an ascription, " instead of proving that a given
work was translated, affords some evidence that it is
original." The inference is worded too strongly and is
scarcely serious as it stands, but the fact itself is certain;
and indeed the Graal romances belong to a class of litera-
ture which was prone to false explanations in respect
both of authorship and language. Still, there is some-
thing to be said for the middle ground suggested, now
long ago, on the authority of Paulin Paris, that while
it is idle to talk of romances in the Latin language, there
is nothing impossible in the suggestion that the sacra-
mental legend of Joseph of Arimathaea and his Sacred
Vessel may have existed in Latin. From his point of
view it was a Gradual, and he even goes so far as to
speculate (a) that it was preserved at Glastonbury ; (£)
that it was not used by the monks because it involved
schism with Rome ; and (r) that, like the Jew of Toledo's
502
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
transcript, it was forgotten for three centuries — till it
was recalled by the quarrel between Henry II. and the
Pope. This is, of course, fantasy, but the bare suppo-
sition of such a Latin legend would account in a natural
manner for an ascription that is singularly consistent,
while it would not pretend to represent the lost imagi-
nary prototypes of the whole complex literature.
In this connection we might do worse than take
warning by one lesson from the literature of alchemy.
The early writers on this subject were in the habit of
citing authorities who, because they could not be identi-
fied, were often regarded as mythical ; but all the same
they existed in manuscript ; they might have been found
by those who had taken the trouble ; and they are now
familiar to students by the edition of Berthelot. In
matters of this kind we do not know what a day may
bring forth, and from all standpoints the existence of a
pious legend — orthodox or heretical, Roman or Breton —
concerning Joseph and his Hallow would be interesting,
as it must also be valuable. Unfortunately, the Quest
of the Holy Graal in respect of its missing literature
is after the manner of a greater enterprise, for there are
many who follow it and few that come to the term of a
new discovery. There are authorities now in England
to whom the possibility of such a text might not be
unacceptable, though criticism dwells rightly upon the
fact that there is no mention of the Holy Vessel in
the earliest apocryphal records of the evangelisation of
Britain by Joseph. We have heard already of one Latin
memorial among the archives of Fecamp, but of its
date we know nothing, and its conversion legend does
not belong to this island.
Having thus determined, as I think, the question of
a single prototype accounting for all the literature, we
have to realise that everything remains in respect of the
mystery of origin — now the wonder element of things
unseen and heard of dimly only, sometimes expressed
imperfectly in Nature poems, which have no concern
5°3
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
therein ; now what sounds like a claim on behalf of the
Celtic Church ; now sacramental legends incorporated
by Latin Christianity into the great body of romances.
But I speak here of things which are approximate and
explicable in an atmosphere of legend married to a
definite world of doctrine. There is nothing in these to
explain (a) the report of a secret sanctuary in all the texts
without any exception whatever, for even the foolish
Crown of all Adventures allocates its house of ghosts to
the loneliest of all roads ; (b) the Secret Words of
Consecration ; (c) the arch-natural Mass celebrated
three of the texts ; (d) the hidden priesthood ; (e)
claim to a holy and hidden knowledge ; (/) the removal
of this knowledge from concealment to further conceal-
ment, because the world was not worthy. These are the
rumours to which I have alluded previously, and I have
attached to them this name, because there is nothing more
obvious in the whole cycle of literature than the fact that
those who wrote of them did not — for the most part-
know what they said. Now, it is a canon of reasonable
criticism that writers who make use of materials which
they do not understand are not the inventors thereof.
It had never entered into the heart of Robert de Borron
that his Secret Words reduced the ordinary Eucharist to
something approaching a semblance ; to the putative
Walter Map that his first Bishop of Christendom put
the whole Christian apostolate into an inferior place ; to
any one of the romancers that his Secret Sanctuary was
the claim of an orthodoxy in transcendence ; to the
authors in particular of the Longer Prose Perceval and
the Quest of Galahad that their implied House of the
Hallows came perilously near to the taking of the heart
out of Christendom. So little did these things occur
to them that their materials are mismanaged rather
seriously in consequence. Had the first Bishop of
Christendom ordained those whom he intended to suc-
ceed him, I should not bring this charge against the
author of that text which presents the consecration of
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Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
the second Joseph in all its sanctity and wonder. But,
as a matter of fact, the custody of the Holy Graal passed
into the hands of a layman, and we are offered the
picture of a priest anointed by Christ who does not even
baptize, a hermit on one occasion being obtained to ad-
minister this simplest of all the sacraments. And yet
this first bishop of Christendom had ordained many
and enthroned some at Sarras. There is a similar crux
in the Lesser Holy Graal and its companion poem. One
•ould have thought that the possession of the Secret
t/ords would be reserved to those bearing the seal
if the priesthood ; but it is not suggested that Joseph
of Arimathasa was either ordained by Christ or by
any bishop of the Church ; his successor, Brons, was
simply a disciple saved out of rejected Jerusalem ; and
Perceval, the tiers bons, was a knight of King Arthur's
court. Of two things, therefore, one : either the makers
of romance who brought in these elements knew not
what they said, and reflected at a far distance that which
they had heard otherwise, or the claims are not that which
they appear on the surface ; beneath them there is a
deeper concealment; there was something behind the
Eucharistic aspect of the mysterious formula and some-
thing behind the ordination in transcendence ; there was
in fine a more secret service than that of the Mass. I
accept the first alternative, but without prejudice to the
second, which is true also, as we shall see later, still
on the understanding that what subtended was not in the
mind of romance.
If it is necessary or convenient to posit the existence
of a single primordial book, then the Sanctum Graal,
Liber Gradalis, or Missa de Corpore Cbristi contained
these elements, and it contained nothing or little of the
diverse matter in the literature. It was not a liturgy
connected with the veneration of a relic or of certain
relics ; it did not recite the legend of Joseph or account
in what manner soever for the conversion of Britain. It
was a Rite of the Order of Melchisedech and it com-
5°5
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
municated the arch-natural sacrament ex hypothesi. The
prologue to the Book of the Holy Graal has what one
would be inclined to call a rumour of this Mass, after
which there supervened an ecstasy as a foretaste of the
Divine Rapture. The term thereof was the Vision
which is He, and the motive of the dilucid experience
is evaded — consciously or not, but, I say, in truth uncon-
sciously— by the substitute of reflections upon difficulties
concerning the Trinity. No Graal writer had ever seen
this book, but the rumour of it was about in the worlot
It was held in reserve not in a monastery at Glastonburn
but by a secret school of Christians whose position ie
respect of current orthodoxy was that of the apex to the
base of any perfect triangle — its completion and not its
destruction. There was more of the rumour abroad than
might have been expected antecedently, as if a Church of
St. John the Divine were planted somewhere in the West,
but not in the open day. There was more of the rumour,
and some makers of texts had heard more than others.
We know that in the prologue to the Book of the Holy
Graal there is what might be taken as a reference to this
company, the members of which were sealed, so that they
could recognise one another by something which they bore
upon their persons. When, in the Quest of Galahad, the
nine strange knights came from the East and the West
and the North and the South to sit down, or to kneel
rather, at the Table of the Graal, they entered without
challenge, they took their proper places and were saluted
and welcomed, because they also bore the seal of the
secret order. King Pelles went out because he was not
on the Quest, because his part was done, because he had
attained and seen, for which reason he departed as one
who says : Nunc dimittis Servum tuum, Domine, secundum
verbum tuum in pace : quia viderunt oculi mei — else-
where or earlier — salutare tuum. The minstrels and
romancers knew little enough of these mysteries, for the
most part, and on the basis of the rumours of the book
they superposed what they had heard otherwise — the
506
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
legend of Joseph, the cultus of the Precious Blood,
clouds of fables, multiples of relics, hoc genus omne.
But it is to be noted in fine that the withdrawal into
deeper concealment referred more especially to the com-
pany as a hidden school, which would be sought and not
found, unless God led the quester. And perhaps those
who came into contact by accident did not always ask
the question : Who administers the Mysteries ? Yet, if
they were elected they were brought in subsequently.
It will be observed that in this speculation the exis-
tence of the rumours which were incorporated does not
in a strict sense involve the existence of any book to
account for their comparative prevalence.
VII
THE DECLARED MTSTERT OF QUEST
There follow in this place certain exotics of the subject
which are not put forward as an integral part thereof,
but are offered to those only who are concerned in the
rumour of the Graal literature — as expressed in this
book — so far as it incorporates that literature in the
annals of Christian sanctity. They will know that the
sins and imperfections of this our human life are attenuated
by the turning of our intellectual part towards the
Blessed Zion, and that, next after leading the all-hallowed
life, the making of holy books to formulate the aspira-
tions of our best part in its best moments is counted in
a man towards righteousness. It is well, indeed, for
him whose life is dedicated to the Quest, but at least —
in the stress and terror of these our wayward times — in
the heart and the inmost heart let us keep its memory
green.
i. Faith is the implicits of the mind passing into
expression formally, and knowledge is the same im-
plicits certified by experience. It is in this sense that
507
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
God recompenses those who seek Him out. The
Mystery of the Holy Graal is the sun of a great im-
plicit rising in the zones of consciousness.
2. If, therefore, from one point of view we are
dealing with great speculations, from another we are
truly concerned with great certainties ; and Galahad
did not question or falter.
3. There is nothing in the world which has less to
do with a process or other conventions and artifices than
the ascent of a soul to light. Thus, the Quest had
no formulae.
4. The mistake which man has made has been to
go in search of his soul, which does not need finding
but entering only, and that by a certain door which is
always open within him. All the doors of Corbenic
were open when Lancelot came thereto, even that
sanctuary into which he could look from afar but
wherein he could not enter. The chief door is in-
scribed : Sapida notitia de Deo.
5. It is understood, however, that before the door
is reached there are gates which are well guarded. So
on a night at midnight, when the moon shone clear,
Lancelot paused at the postern, which opened toward
the sea, and saw how two lions guarded the entrance.
6. It is true also that the gates are not opened
easily by which the King of Glory comes in ; yet we
know that the King comes. The key of these gates
is called Voluntas infiammata. This will works on the
hither side, but there is another which works on the
further, and this is named Benrplacitum termino carens.
When the gates open by the concurrence of the two
powers, the King of Salem comes forth carrying Bread
and Wine. Of the communication which then follows
it is said : Gustari potzst quod ex-plicari nequit. Galahad
and his fellows did taste and saw that the Lord is sweet.
7. For the proselytes of the gate which is external and
the postulants at the pronaos of the temple, the Cruci-
fixion took place on Calvary. For the adepts and the
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Mystic Aspects of 'the Graal Legend
epopts, the question, if it can be said to arise, is not
whether this is true on the plane of history, but in what
manner it signifies, seeing that the great event of all
human history began at the foundation of the world,
as it still takes place daily in the soul of every man for
whom the one thing needful is to know when Christ shall
arise within him. It is then that those on the Quest can
say with Sir Bors : " But God was ever my comfort."
8. All that we forget is immaterial if that which we
remember is vital, as, for example, the Lord of Quest,
who said : " Therefore I wote wel whan my body is dede,
my sowle shalle be in grete joye to see the blessid
Trynyte every day, and the mageste of oure lord
Jhesu Cryst " — in other words, Contemplatio perfectissima
et altissima Dei.
9. The first condition of interior progress is in detach-
ment from the lesser responsibilities which — because they
have not entered into the heart of hearts — are external
to our proper interests and distract from those high
and onerous burdens which we have to carry on our
road upward, until such time as even the road itself —
and the burdens thereto belonging — shall assume and
transport us. From the greatest even to the least the
missions of knight-errantry were followed in utter de-
tachment, and those who went on the Quest carried no
impedimenta. So also is the great silence ordained about
those who would hear the interior Dei locutio altissimi.
10. The generation of God is outward and so into the
estate of man ; but the generation of man — which is
called also rebirth — is inward, and so into the Divine
Union. The great clerks wrote the adventures of the
Graal in great books, but there was no rehearsal of the
last branch, the first rubric of which would read : De
felicissima animce cum Deo unione.
1 1 . Most conventions of man concern questions of
procedure, and it is so with the things which are above,
for we must either proceed or perish. Sir Gawain
turned back, and hence he was smitten of the old wound
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that Lancelot gave him ; but no knight who achieved
the Quest died in arms, unless in Holy War.
12. In the declared knowledge which behind it has
the hidden knowledge, blood is the symbol of life, and
this being so it can be understood after what manner the
Precious Blood profiteth and the Reliquary thereof.
The other name of this Reliquary is Holy Church. But
such are the offices of its mercy that in examine mortis
even Gawain received his Saviour.
13. The root from which springs the great tree
of mysticism is the old theological doctrine that God is
the centre of the heart. He is by alternative the soul's
centre. This is the ground of the union : 'per charitatem
justi uniuntur cum Deo. Gawain entreated Lancelot to
" praye some prayer more or lesse for my soule ; " King
Arthur as he drifted in the dark barge said to Bedivere :
"And yf thou here neuer more of me praye for my
soule," but Perceval and Galahad knew that their reward
was with them ; they asked for no offerings and no one
wearied Heaven.
14. In the soul's conversion there is no office of time,
and this is why the greatest changes are always out of
expectation. The Graal came like angels — unawares.
The castissimus et purissimus amplexus and the jelix
osculum are given as in the dark and suddenly. There
is further nothing in the wide world so swift and
so silent as the illapsus Cbristi in centrum animcz. So
also it is said of Galahad that " sodenely his soule de-
parted."
15. The five changes of the Graal are analogous to
the five natures of man, and these in their turn corre-
spond to the four aspects of the cosmos and that which
rules all things within and from above the cosmos.
1 6. The consideration of eternity arises from that
of the Holy Graal, as from all literature at its highest,
and if I have set it as the term of my own researches,
in this respect, it is rather because it has imposed itself
than because I have sought it out.
510
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
Obiter Dicta.
And now as the sum total of these mystical aspects,
the desire of the eyes in the seeking and finding of the
Holy Graal may, I think, be re-expressed as follows :—
Temple or Palace or Castle — Mont Salvatch or Corbenic
— wherever located and whether described as a wilderness
of building, crowded burg or simple hermit's hold —
there is one characteristic concerning the sanctuary which,
amidst all its variations in the accidents, is essentially
the same ; the Keeper of the great Hallows has fallen
upon evil days ; the means of restoration and of healing
are, as one would say, all around him, yet the help must
come from without ; it is that of his predestined suc-
cessor, whose ofHce is to remove the vessel, so that it
is henceforth never seen so openly. Taking the Quest
of Galahad as that which has the highest significance
spiritually, I think that we may speak of it thus : — We
know that in the last analysis it is the inward man who
is really the Wounded Keeper. The mysteries are his ;
on him the woe has fallen ; it is he who expects healing
and redemption. His body is the Graal Castle, which
is also the castle of Souls, and behind it is the Earthly
Paradise as a vague and latent memory. We may not
be able to translate the matter of the romance entirely
into mystical symbolism, since it is only a rumour at
a distance of life in the spirit and its great secrets.
But, I think, we can see that it all works together for
the one end of all. He who enters into the considera-
tion of this secret and immemorial house under fitting
guidance shall know why it is that the Graal is served
by a pure maiden, and why that maiden is ultimately
dispossessed. Helayne is the soul, and the soul is in
exile because all the high unions have been declared
voided — the crown has been separated from the kingdom,
and experience from the higher knowledge. So long as
she remained a pure virgin, she was more than a thyrsus
bearer in the mysteries, but the morganatic marriage of
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
mortal life is part of her doom. This is still a high
destiny, for the soul out of earthly experience brings forth
spiritual desire, which is the quest of the return journey,
and this is Galahad. It is therefore within the law and
the order that she has to conceive and bring him forth.
Galahad represents the highest spiritual aspirations and
desires passing into full consciousness, and so into
attainment. But he is not reared by his mother, be-
cause Eros, which is the higher knowledge, has dedicated
the true desire to the proper ends thereof. It will be
seen also what must be understood by Lancelot in secret
communication with Helayne, though he has taken her
throughout for another. The reason is that it is im-
possible to marry even in hell without marrying that
seed which is of heaven. As she is the psychic woman,
so is he the natural man, or rather the natural intelli-
gence which is not without its consecrations, not without
its term in the highest. Helayne believes that her desire
is only for Lancelot, but this is because she takes him
for Eros, and it is by such a misconception that the
lesser Heaven stoops to the earth ; herein also there is
a sacred dispensation, because so is the earth assumed.
I have said that Lancelot is the natural man, but he is
such merely at the highest ; he is born in great sorrow,
and she who has conceived him saves her soul alive
amidst the offices of external religion. He is carried
into the lesser land of Faerie, as into a garden of child-
hood. When he draws towards manhood, he comes
forth from the first places of enchantment and is clothed
upon by the active duties of life as by the vestures of
chivalry. He enters also into the unsanctified life of
sense, into an union against the consecrated life and
order. But his redeeming quality is that he is faithful
and true, because of which, and because of his genealogy,
he is chosen to beget Galahad, of whom he is otherwise
unworthy, even as we all, in our daily life, fall short
of the higher aspirations of the soul. As regards the
Keeper, it is certain that he must die and be replaced by
512
Mystic Aspects of the Graal Legend
another Keeper before the true man can be raised, with
the holy things to him belonging, which Hallows are
indeed withdrawn, but it is with and in respect of him
only, for the keepers are a great multitude, though it
is certain that the Graal is one. The path of quest is
the path of upward progress, and it is only at the great
height that Galahad knows himself as really the Wounded
Keeper and that thus, in the last resource, the physician
heals himself. Now this is the mystery from everlasting,
which is called in the high doctrine Schema misericordicz.
It is said : Latet, ceternumque latebit, until it is revealed
in us ; and as to this : Te rogamus, audi nos.
513 2 K
BOOK IX
SECRET TRADITION IN CHRISTIAN TIMES
THE ARGUMENT
I. PRELIMINARY TO THE WHOLE SUBJECT. — The atmos-
phere of the Middle Ages — After what manner the sub-
surface meanings in Graal books suggest the possibility of
other concealments in literature about the same period —
Medieval mystic thought — Independent schools — The pur-
pose of the present consideration — The assumption of a
Secret Tradition — A question which arises therefrom —
Multiplicity of traditions — A distinction between occult and
mystic schools. II. SOME ALLEGED SECRET SCHOOLS OF
THE MIDDLE AGES. — Albigensian sects and the misconcep-
tions concerning them — Foolish attempt to connect them
with the literature of the Holy Graal — The test question of
Eucharistic doctrine in heresies — The Eucharist among the
Manichczans — Albigenses from a Protestant standpoint —
Various forms of the heresy — Persecution of all and sundry
— The crusade under Innocent III. — Documentary evidence
concerning points of Albigensian belief — The hostile evidence
— On either assumption the Albigenses offer nothing to our
purpose — The doctrine of transubstantiation — The specu-
lations of Aroux — And those of the elder Rossetti — The
argument from the Divine Comedy — Confusions on the
subject of the Graal — Thesis concerning chivalry — An
analogy from another controversy — General conclusion on
the subject. III. THE LATIN LITERATURE OF ALCHEMY
AND THE HERMETIC SECRET IN THE LIGHT OF THE
EUCHARISTIC MYSTERY. — Development of two concurrent
S1?
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
secret schools at the -period of the Graal — The claim of
alchemy on the surface — 'The subsurface claim developed
in later times — Declared object of the present research —
Analogies of the arch-natural Eucharist — Correspondence
with the notion of a voided House of Doctrine — Position
of alchemy in respect of the first instance and of Kabalism
in respect of the second — The period of transition in Her-
metic literature — Byzantine Alchemy — Difficulties of the
subject — The two schools of the Art — Their modern repre-
sentatives— The terminology common to both — The one vessel
— The alchemical matter — The Three Principles — Corre-
spondences with the Holy Eucharist — Further concerning the
alchemical matter — The Art as a Mystery of the Soul — Of
purgations in Alchemy — Their correspondence in the ex-
perience of conversion — The Hermetic Stone — The Elixir—
Of man as the whole Subject of the Art — Schedule of the
chief process — Further concerning Eucharistic analogies-
Distinctions in the order of symbolism — Summary of the
catholic interpretation. IV. THE KABALISTIC ACADEMIES.
— Of the Secret Language — The Mystery of Loss — The
early schools of Kabalism — Its Theosophical Scheme — Of
that which was taken from the Sanctuary of Israel —
Analogies with Graal legend — The Holy Name — Acci-
dental analogies between Graal and Kabalistic legend —
Absence of all communication between the school of theosophy
and the school of romance — Of Jewry in Spain and Southern
France during the Middle Ages — Practical independence
of all the coincident schools — The mind of Kabalism.
V. THE CLAIM IN RESPECT OF TEMPLAR INFLUENCE.—
An illustration of the romance of history — The Templars
and the Latin Church — After what manner the Temple
has been brought within the chain of the Secret Tradition—
The Graal and Templarism — Nature of one hypothesis —
The Argument
Templar symbolism in Graal literature — The Temple and,
the Parsifal — What is actual in the alleged, connection —
The Templars and, Catholicism — The Graal and the
Church — Questions of heresy — A matter of personal con-
fession— Summary of the Templar hypothesis in respect of
the Graal literature — Conclusion from the charges against
the Order — Its true position — The ideal regarding it —
The hypothesis abandoned. VI. THE GRAAL FORMULA
IN THE LIGHT OF OTHER GLEANINGS FROM THE CATHOLIC
SACRAMENTARY. — The Secret Orders and the Life of
Sanctity — Depth and wonder of the Catholic Mass —
Further concerning the verbal formula of consecration —
Some errors of enthusiasm — Limitations of the Graal epoch
— Traditional wonders of the Eucharist — Another side of
the food-giving powers of the Graal — The first of the
Divine Mysteries. VII. THE LAPIS EXILIS. — Dimen-
sions of the Graal Stone — The Latin term of Wolfram —
Renderings that are possible in the mystic sense — Stone and,
Chalice — Some scriptural analogies — T^oharic evidence —
The Lost Word — Analogies that are far from the goal.
VIII. THE ANALOGIES OF MASONRY. — (A) The Assump-
tion of the Building Guild — The true values of genealogy —
One point of correspondence between the Graal legends and,
Freemasonry — Romance of archaeology — Historical side of
Masonry — The minima of Masonic research — A distinc-
tion concerning three classes — An alternative concerning
Masonry. (B) Masonry and Moral Science — The ethical
position — That this is an unfit subject of symbolism —
Comparative failure of the proposed, instrument — Intima-
tion that there is another side of Masonry. (C) A Theory
of Hermetic Interference — Concerning early Craft records-
Voyages of speculation — The authority of Ragon — After
what manner he recites the invention of the symbolical
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
grades — Their true understanding stated apart from their
origin. (D) One Key to the Sanctuary — Craft and High
Degrees — Conclusion concerning ethical doctrine — Of certain
studies recommended to the candidate by Masonry — After
what manner we are to understand the symbolism of build-
ings— Of spiritual temples — The House of Doctrine — The
Master and the question proposed to him — How the House
of Doctrine was built on a different plan — The Secret of the
King — The Temple in the heart — Concerning Rites of
Initiation — The Tables of the Law — A secret deposit in
Jewry — The Voided House in Masonry — The Masonic
House of Christian Doctrine — A legend of Templar ven-
geance— An illustration from the High Degrees — The vacant
sepulchre — Testimony of another High Grade — Masonic
Orders of Chivalry — The Voided House of Christian
Doctrine — Concurrence of Graal literature and Masonic
implicits — The position of Masonry in respect of official
religion — Conclusion as regards Masonry. IX. THE
HALLOWS OF THE GRAAL MYSTERY RE-DISCOVERED IN THE
TALISMANS OF THE TAROT. — Of sudden lights seen in un-
looked-for places — Of playing-cards and the Book of Thoth
— Concerning Tarot symbols as a treasure of the secret
schools — Of available handbooks — Particulars concerning
Tarot cards — The four palmary symbols — Their substantial
identity with Graal Hallows — General conclusion as to the
schools of symbolism — Secret doctrines and secret schools —
Of one withdrawn school — Loss and gain — The restoration
of all things.
520
BOOK IX
SECRET TRADITION IN CHRISTIAN TIMES
I
PRELIMINARY TO THE WHOLE SUBJECT
THOUGHT in the Middle Ages moved, like external
science, through a world of mystery, and the Christ-
light moved through the mist-light filling the bounds
of sense with the shapes and symbols of vision. It
follows, and this naturally, that most things seemed
possible at a period when all things were dubious in
respect of knowledge and apart from the power of
religion, which tinged life itself with the lesser elements
of ecstasy, there was the kind of enchantment which
dwells always about the precincts of unknown vistas.
Apart also from the shapes of imagination, there were
the extravagances of minds seeking emancipation from law
and authority, more especially in the matters of faith.
The Books of the Holy Graal do not belong to the last
category, but after their own manner they are like
echoes from far away, because even as the secrets of
the Greater Mysteries have not been written, and the
Holy Assemblies do not issue proceedings, so the higher
life of sanctity and the experiment towards that term,
whether manifested in books of mystical theology or in
books of romance, reach only a partial expression. The
value of the Graal legends is like the value of other
legends — I mean, in the mind of the mystic at this
day : it is resident in the suggestions and the lights
521
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
which it can afford us for the maintenance of the great,
implied concordat which constitutes the Divine Alliance.
Having found that we are dealing with a body of writing
which puts forth the rumour of strange claims and
suggests concealed meanings, having found also that it
is a literature which was acquired as if almost with a
conscious intention to develop these particular interests,
and being desirous of knowing the kind of intervention
and the particular motives which were at work, if this
indeed be possible, we are naturally disposed to ask
whether there were other concealed literatures at the
same period, and what light — if any — they cast upon
these questions. The great school of Christian mystic
thought within the official church was concerned wholly
with a mystery of sanctity, the term of which was
identical with the object that I have sought to put
forward as the term of the Graal quest ; but it had no
secret claim and no concealed motive. We cannot,
therefore, explain the one in a complete simplicity by
the other, though we know in a general sense that it
was from the other that the one issued. There were,
however, independent schools of literature belonging
to the same period which do give us certain lights,
because, in the last resource, they did come, one and
all, out of the same sanctuary ; and it is obviously
reasonable to suppose that so far as there are difficulties
in the one path we may receive help from the collateral
paths and thus attain some better understanding of the
whole. If a particular spirit or secret mind, school or
sodality, took over the old folk-lore legends, infusing a
new motive therein, which motive is akin to the purpose
discernible in coincident literatures, that which inter-
vened in the one case was probably in relation with the
others. I propose, therefore, to consider these extrinsic
schools shortly, and to show that throughout a number
of centuries we can trace successively the same implicits,
it being understood that they are always put forward
in a different way. In this manner we shall come to
522
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
see that there have been several interventions, but
taking place under such circumstances that those who
intervened may have been always the same secret school,
on the understanding that this school does not correspond
to a corporate institution and never spoke officially. It is
necessary, however, to deal in the first place with one at-
tempt to account for the Graal literature which has been
already put forward, because there are certain directions in
which it is idle to look and it is well to know concerning
them. Prior to the settlement of this preliminary ques-
tion in the section that next follows, there is a specific
point that demands our attention at the moment, and it
can be stated in a few words. On the assumption that
there has been a Secret Tradition perpetuated through
Christian times, the place of which is in the West, it
seems desirable to understand what part of it matters
vitally in respect of our own subject. There are several
schools of secret literature, and each of them, under its
proper veil, has perpetuated something belonging to its
particular order. There are, for example, the schools
of magic, and it is these precisely that embody nothing
to our purpose ; they constitute heresies of occult
practice which find their strict correlation in the external
heresies of doctrine, wherein also there is no light, as
we shall see immediately. If the resolution has not been
made already, and that definitely, it is time — and it
is high time — that the whole domain of phenomenal
occultism should be transferred to the care of psycho-
logical science, with the hope that it will pursue that
path of research into the nature of man and his environ-
ment which less accredited investigations of the past
have proved productive. They are no part of the
mystic work and, having regard to the extent of our
preoccupations, it is fortunate that neither approxi-
mately nor remotely do they enter into the subject of
those schools of thought, the remains of which may
cast a certain light upon the greater implicits of the
Graal literature.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
II
SOME ALLEGED SECRET SCHOOLS OF THE
MIDDLE AGES
Perhaps no Christian sect has been the subject of more
foolish misapprehension than the Albigenses, and this
on all sides, but more especially on the part of writers
who represent the borderland of mystic thought.
Against the iniquity of Albigensian persecution in the
past, we have later the folly, not unmixed with dis-
honesty, of the Protestant apologists ; but worse perhaps
than the rest is that folly which has attempted to connect
the sect and its exponents in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries with the literature of the Holy Graal. The
initial impulse in this direction is found in speculations,
criticisms and modes of interpretation with which
France made us familiar about the middle of the nine-
teenth century, and this leading has been followed by a
few writers in England who scarcely know their subject,
and offer reflections of opinion which has risen up in
obscure and unaccepted places. For the purpose of this
investigation I care nothing whether the Albigenses
were pure Christians, as pure Christianity is understood
according to sectarian canons, or whether they were
Manichaeans. The all-important question is the light
under which they presented Eucharistic doctrine, and
from this standpoint it is certain that they could have
had no connection with the development of the Graal
cycle. If they were Manichaeans, they had a voided
and tinkered Eucharist, from which nothing follows in
connection with that mystery. If, on the other hand,
they were the Protestants of their period, they would
as such deny most of the sacraments, and in respect of
doctrine, at least, they would have tampered doub'lefs
with the Eucharist. Setting aside for a moment some
524
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
French speculations which have nothing to tell us regard-
ing Albigensian teachings, and deal only, as we shall see
later, with a particular construction of a great body of
romantic literature, it may be said — and is necessary to
note in order to clear the issues — that the Protestant
standpoint in all matters of this kind has been naturally
one of opposition to the Latin Church, and to the Church
theory that the Albigensians, including the Paulicians,
who were their predecessors, were Manichaeans, while the
connected sect of Waldenses, or disciples of Peter Valdo,
were originally Donatists. With these questions in
themselves we have no concern, nor yet with the old
egregious contention that there was a line of succession
in perpetuity from Apostolic times through the Wal-
densians. There is no reason to suppose that the
hypothesis was true, and it matters little if it was. I
place in the same category one not less preposterous
supposition — that the Vaudois had been located in the
Cottian Alps since the times of the Apostles, and that
their system had never varied from the tenets and
practices of primitive Christianity. It is not of necessity
a seal or mark of favour if these facts are undoubted ;
actually, they are questionable enough, like the apolo-
getical Apiece de resistance which accounts for the small-
ness of the Vaudois community by inferring from the
Apocalypse that the Church during a certain disastrous
period would be reduced within very narrow limits, and
that for this reason — among reasons not less logical —
Vaudois, Waldenses and Albigenses constituted during
such period the sole and truly Catholic Church. If
majorities are usually in the wrong, it is not less true
that some minorities are foolish and wild in their
notions, as expressed by those who are their mouthpiece.
Another contention connects the so-called Waldensian
Church with the Church Primitive through the Albi-
genses, and if the last sect had really the Paulicians for
their ancestors they date back to a considerable antiquity,
while, as regards distribution, it is said that the earlier
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
heresy had its conventicles established all the way from
Thrace to Gascony. They came from the East originally,
or this is their legend, but their traces have disappeared,
supposing that the story is true outside the imagination
of apologists. However this may be, the Paulicians, so
far as history is concerned, arose in Armenia, where they
were founded by one Constantine about the middle of
the seventh century. They were mixed up with the
Milesians, who made common cause with Constantine,
but they were proscribed by the Emperors of Byzantium
and the heretic was himself put to death. The same
Paulicians have been identified with the Cathari, and these
are said to have been in union with the Waldenses, whose
first stronghold was among the Alpine valleys of Pied-
mont. On the other hand, the Paterins, whose chain
of dissemination is affirmed to have extended from
Bulgaria through Lombardy to the Atlantic, have been
represented as a variety of the Albigensian sect, if not
identical therewith. These views constitute a cloud
upon the dubious sanctuary, in respect of its origin.
Other accounts say that they appeared in Italy during
the first years of the eleventh century, with which may
be compared the counter-suggestion that their most
probable founder was Peter of Lyons more than a
hundred years later. Persecution may well have joined
distinct elements of sect till they became merged in one
another ; it caused them also to move, like the Graal,
westward, and thus they entered Southern France,
where those who had pre-existed under more than one
name received the title of Albigenses — as it is thought,
from their headquarters at Albi. Here also they fell
under proscription, and because at that period men
believed — and never more strongly — that they were
doing God's work by annihilating those who worshipped
Him under another code of doctrine, we learn of St.
Dominic fighting the heresy with other weapons than
the Sword of the Spirit — in the belief that there also
might be either the Word of God, or its convenient
526
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
substitute. This was under Innocent III., who pro-
claimed the first crusade against the Albigenses, its
leader being Simon, Count of Montfort. The crusade
began about 1213, and Folquet — the troubadour Bishop
of Marseilles — was one of its most violent partisans.
It was in the course of this villainous business that the
Castle of Montseques — or Mont Segur — which a few
zealous, indiscriminating minds have sought to identify
with Mont Salvatch — was stormed and burnt with many
of the Perfect Brethren, including the Lady Esclair-
monde. So do official churches illustrate their con-
struction of the mystic paradox concerning the Prince
of Peace, who came with a sword. That the gates of
hell do not prevail against the true Church seems without
prejudice to the counter-fact that there are times and
seasons when perdition itself rises up, as one might say,
in the external sanctuary itself, and God knows that if
ever there was a period when the mystery of all iniquity
came from the deeps in its power, the time was the
thirteenth century, and the places were Provence and
Languedoc.
If we set aside every thesis of apologists, it is possible
to obtain from documents a certain first-hand impression
concerning Albigensian beliefs. On the basis of their
own confessions they denied Manichaean connections
and principles, claiming to follow primitive Christian
teaching as they constructed it from the New Testament
or certain parts thereof, since it does not appear that
they accepted all the epistles. It is possible, however,
that their real views were concealed even in their con-
fessions, and though to us the question does not signify
in either alternative, it is out of this view that the
counter-hypothesis arises, which is that of the accusing
voice testifying in the church that destroyed them.
A Dominican missionary and inquisitor, who recounted,
in a poem which has survived, his controversy with an
Albigensian theologian, accuses the sect (i) of denying
baptism and regarding Satan as the creator of this world ;
527
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
(2) of rejecting confession and teaching that those who
had sons and daughters were outside the pale of salva-
tion ; (3) of claiming inspiration from the Holy Spirit
and making a traffic therein amongst its disciples ;
(4) of denying the resurrection and affirming that the
souls of the redeemed would assume a new body, having
a certain resemblance to the old and yet differing there-
from ; and in fine (5) of maintaining that the souls of
men are those of lost angels — the difficulty about this,
in the mind of the Dominican, being apparently that
we have no recollection of our past. The importance of
this text is that although it embodies accusations included
in the proscription of the sect it may also have reflected
current fluidic opinions in orthodox circles at the period.
Other accusations affirm (a) that the Baptism which
was recognised by the Albigenses was that of Fire or
of the Spirit, recalling the mysterious office of the
Paraclete which is often a subject of reference in the
Graal literature ; (b) that the wandering preachers of
the sect distributed nourishment for the body as well
as the Bread of Angels — here recalling the twofold
ministry of the Graal ; (c) that they rejected the books
of Moses ; (d) that they regarded this sublunary world
as the only hell ; (e) that their subsurface working was
that of a new and secret priesthood which was to dis-
possess and succeed the papal hierarchy, as if here also
there was a special succession from the apostles having
kinship with the super-apostolical succession of the
Graal priesthood.
Such fantastic analogies notwithstanding, it is clear
that the sects of Southern France — as presented by
either hypothesis — offer nothing to our purpose. From
eclectic Gnosticism, which took over from Christianity
that which coincided with its purpose, to Vaudois and
Lollards, there is not one which sought to develop or
exalt the sacramental teaching of the ancient Church.
I know that, on the authority of Origen, the Marcionites
taught the communication to the soul of man of a
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
Divine and Sanctifying Spirit added by the Redeemer,
Who imparted it in the Eucharist, and if this meant the
descent of the Paraclete, the perpetuation of such a
doctrine might help us to understand why the Voice
of the Graal was that of the Holy Ghost and yet in
some mysterious way was that also of Christ. But of
such perpetuation there is no trace whatever. As
regards the Albigenses, it is certain historically that they
denied transubstantiation, though they accepted some
qualified sacramental teaching concerning the Lord's
Supper, which they commemorated in the woods and
forests on a cloth spread upon the ground. It is worse
than idle to suppose that they had any connection with
the Graal cycle, and this would remain substantially true
if, by a wild supposition, we elected to suppose that
Guiot, with his Provencal connections, was a member of
their sect, and — going still further — if we suggested that
his poem conveyed, after some hidden manner, a part
of Albigensian teaching. That it did nothing of the
kind is clear on the evidence of Wolfram. The poem
is lost, or at least withdrawn for a period, like the Graal
itself, and though we cannot speak certainly on most
matters which concern it, on this one matter there does
not seem room for doubt.
For the rest, the Albigenses were a sect without a
literature, except in so far as that of the Troubadours
at the period may have been — and this is likely enough
— an occasional spokesman among them. Contemporary
chroniclers estimated that all the principal minstrels,
except two, were on the side of the sect ; these excep-
tions were Izarn and Fulke. The conquest of Toulouse
extinguished the literature and even the language of
Southern France, as also its chivalry.
I should now be justified in regarding the whole
matter as determined in the negative sense, but a word
must be said to dispose of that other claim to which I
adverted at the beginning. It took, as I have hinted,
all chivalrous romance for its province, and it claimed to
529 2 L
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
have demonstrated that a vast European literature had
been written by Albigenses for the edification of Albi-
genses and to put forth in a veiled manner Albigensian
doctrine. There are certain precursors who do not
prepare the way, but they open up issues which end
either in a cul de sac or take the seeker through by-
paths which can be followed interminably without
leading to a true goal. The author of this demon-
stration was E. Aroux, who published in 1858 the
Mysteries of Chivalry and of Platonic Love in the Middle
Ages. Its inspiration in chief was derived from Gabriele
Rossetti and particularly from the Anti-papal Spirit
which preceded the Reformation. Both works have
exercised an influence on certain schools of occult
thought in England ; but Rossetti does not speak of
the Graal, and hence there is no call that here I should
speak of him. The monument of M. Aroux was preceded
by other of his works designed to show that Dante
was (a) heretical, revolutionary and socialistic ; (£) con-
nected with an alleged fusion between the Albigenses,
Templars and Ghibellines for the creation of Free-
masonry ; (c) himself so far implicated in Freemasonry
that the Divine Comedy is really Masonic in its purpose.
In further support of these views Aroux had translated
the whole Commedia into literal French verse and had
commented on it " according to the spirit." Finally,
he had instituted comparisons between Dante and the
writers of the Graal cycle. It thus came about that
the products of this cycle were included by his general
ingarnering, but he shows little familiarity with his
subject, and he wrote at a period when the literature
was still practically unprinted. He affirms, absurdly
enough, that the Holy Graal was a mysterious associa-
tion and that the mission of its initiates was " to recover
the vessel of truth with luminous characters wherein
was received the Precious Blood of the Saviour." Ac-
cording to his peculiar canon of criticism this signified
the design of " leading back the Christian Church to
530
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
apostolic times and the faithful observation of the
Gospel precepts." M. Aroux wrote as a defender of
the Roman Church, and, after all that has been said
and done upon the whole subject, it has not occurred
to any one — perhaps least of all to him — that the true
mission of the Church may have been to get away from
apostolic times and to put aside, like St. Paul, in its
maturity the things which belong to the child. For the
rest, M. Aroux confused in a grotesque manner the
Graal knights with those of the Round Table, and
appeared to suppose that the Parsifal and liturel are
representative of the entire literature.
As regards chivalry, his thesis can be stated shortly :
The actual, historical, feudal chivalry was an institution
more or less savage, and the chivalry set forth in the
romances had no existence on earth. This is equivalent
to saying that the heroes and heroines of Mrs. Radcliffe,
the modes and manners which she depicts, the spirit
which characterises her episodes, perhaps even the scenes
which she describes so graphically at hearsay, are never
found in real life, though sentimentalism is always
sentimentalism, mountains are always mountains, and
as regards the Pyrenees in particular they are situated
indubitably between France and Spain. The thing
goes without saying in each case, for the romance, one
would say, is — well, precisely a romance. But on the
basis of this transparent fact, M. Aroux builds his theory
that the books of chivalry were the corpus doctrinale
and literary body-politic of the Protestantism of its
period, reduced to this resource because of the intolerant
powers that were. And this is just what appears to be
so highly ridiculous, not because a literature cannot have
concealed motives, or that of the Graal among them,
but because it could be shown in a still more conclusive
manner that the Confessional of the Black Penitents was
the final rescript of the followers of Manes. And this
seems to be intolerable.
Speaking generally as to the canon of criticism, it is
531
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
in all respects like that of the late Mrs. Henry Pott in
the Bacon and Shakespeare controversy : he, as she,
proves far too much for his own credit. If the canons
of Mrs. Pott demonstrate that Bacon was the concealed
author of the disputed plays, then the same canons
show that he must have written the works of Marlowe,
Massinger, Ford, and nearly all Elizabethan literature.
In the same way, the evidences adduced by M. Aroux
are either insufficient to prove his point, or alternatively
a similar scheme has given us the Nights of Straparola,
the Nibelungen Sagas, the Romance of the Rose, and the
entire literature of the Troubadours, to say nothing of
the Welsh Mabinogion, Reynard the Fox, and things
innumerable of the German Minnesingers. This is
indeed the express thesis of M. Aroux, and the only
reason that he omitted the Latin literature of alchemy is
because he had not come across it. There is no need to
outline the nature of his evidences, but, to speak gener-
ally concerning it, the same canons might be applied
with the same success to Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of
the Forest and to the Mysteries of Udol-pho. The prin-
ciple, in other words, repeats itself.
I should not have dealt with these fantastic matters
except for the interest which they once raised in schools
which draw from my own and because in the last resource
they are an attempt, after their own manner, to show
the hand of supposed secret schools in the development
of the Graal literature. I now conclude as follows :
(a) That the chivalry of all the romances was an ideal
conception, corresponding as much and as little to the
subject-matter of any other cycle of romance ; and
(b) that the historical chivalry of the period corresponded
to the idea which we obtain of the period by reading
old chronicles, like those of Froissart. For the rest,
M. Aroux's canon of interpretation is simple exceedingly :
(a) any heroine of the romances signifies the Albigensian
pseudo-church ; (b) any hero signifies one of its apostles
or teachers ; (c) the enemies of both are the dominant,
532
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
opposing Church ; (d) the Holy Vase of the Graal is
its divine and hidden doctrine. I can imagine, in byways
of literature, the stories of Captain Macheath, Claude
Duval and Richard Turpin interpreted along analogous
lines — for example, as the records of a secret attempt to
re-establish the Roman hierarchy in England.
Ill
THE LATIN LITERATURE OF ALCHEMY AND
THE HERMETIC SECRET IN THE LIGHT
OF THE EUCHARISTIC MTSTERT
It will be understood that the sects of Southern France,
holding various offices of protestation, testified by act
and word that the gates of hell had prevailed against
the Latin Church and that the efficacious doctrines,
the plenary rights, were in their hands. In other words,
they had a special office in religion, and, I must add,
the fatality of a superior process — all which instructs
us precisely and fully why the Mystery of the Holy
Graal was beyond their horizon and why they form no
part of the Secret Tradition in Christian times. Their
exponents — it is all as you please — were kings or rebels
in warfare ; they were unaccredited and disputatious
doctors ; they were errant preachers of a new-fangled
scheme for the improved spiritual housing of priest-
ridden classes. They trafficked — if you please otherwise
—in Brummagem wares of apostolic Christianity ; they
were pedlars, and they carried no licence ; their goods
were either contraband or they were put forward under
false marks. But if you prefer an alternative — since
nothing in respect of them carries the least consequence
—they handed down, diluted or otherwise, the remanents
of some earlier heresy, gnosis, or occult confection of
dogma, and if in respect thereof they concealed their
real beliefs, nothing which signifies in respect of our
533
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
proper concern reposes behind the evasion. If I have
any view on the subject — and honestly I have next to
none — they were perhaps the Protestants of their period,
dealing in poisonous nostrums of pure doctrine, simple
faith, Bible Christianity, and they circulated uncorrupted
interpretations of the Word of God — all horrors of that
spurious simplicity which takes the wayfaring man into
the first pit. We who know that omnia exeunt in
mysterium have recited long since our Asperge and have
turned aside from such blasphemous follies.
Outside these sects, there were two great concurrent
schools of secret thought which were developing in
Europe at the period of the Graal ; there was the wonder
and the rumour of alchemy and there was the great
sacred mystery of Kabalistic Jewry. The first was
scattered all over the western countries, and its reflection
at the period in England was Roger Bacon, though,
as it so happens, he signifies nothing for our purpose.
The chief seat of the other was in Spain, but it had
important academies coming into being in the South of
France. I shall take my first illustration from Alchemy,
and it must be understood that on the surface it claims
to put forward the mystery of a material operation,
behind which we discern — but this is not invariably
— another subject and another intention. Speaking
generally, the evidences of a Secret Tradition are very
strong in alchemy and they are strong also in other
schools of thought which will remain subsequently for
our consideration. But seeing that it may strike the
unversed student as not less than fantastic that I should
choose the old and dubious science of metallic trans-
mutation to cast light upon the Eucharistic side of the
Graal Mystery, I must in the first place explain that
two governing motives will actuate the whole inquest
which follows hereafter : (i) To ascertain whether the
concurrent or succeeding schools of secret thought, which
appeared in Europe before or after the canon of the
Graal was closed, offered any analogies to the notion of
534 '
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
an arch-national Eucharist, or — in other words — to the
existence, prosecution and success of the Great Experi-
ment ; and (2) whether they offered anything which
corresponds with the alternative notion of a voided
House of Doctrine. The concurrence or competition
which may subsist between the two theses will be men-
tioned at the term of the research. It is obvious,
meanwhile, that we shall not expect to find secret words
of consecration or some concealed form of the Mass,
because we are investigating the analogies of intention
which may be imbedded in distinct literatures. If we
came across, for example — as we might, if we cared to
seek — an occult requiem for the soul of a dead alchemist,
we should set it aside simply as impertinent rather than
relative. It will prove — and quite naturally — that such
literatures will contain many secret verbal formulae but
not those which we should require if our zeal went before
our discretion and we sought after secret words — as,
for example, a super-efficacious version of the Epiclesis
clause. The same counsels of prudence will teach us not
to expect in the other schools a replicated claim regarding
super-apostolical succession ; it is sufficient — and it does
not concern us either — that the epopts of these imbedded
Christian and cognate mysteries were ordained specially
and strangely in the paths which they followed for the
proper term thereof — but this is of election to the
mysteries. Lastly, we shall not look to find a plainer
expression than we have met with already in the rumours
of the Graal sanctuary, but though we are dealing in
some cases with the most cryptic of all literatures and
in others with elusive forms of initiation, we shall find
as a fact that there is less room for misconception than
—all things considered — might be expected. I premise,
therefore, that the great Eucharistic experiment, con-
cealed under the supposition of a secret consecration
formula, has its strict analogy in the second sense attri-
buted to the doctrines and processes of alchemical
transmutation ; while the loss of the Graal — or its
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
counterpart, the loss of the gracious and piteous words
— has its analogy in the loss of the word in Kabalism
and in the symbolical science of Masonry. We have
seen already that the analogies of the Graal Quest are
in the annals of sanctity and the present researches are
the other side of the same annals. It follows that
there is a super-incession between all the schools, but
it is of the ideological order only and of the experience
thereto belonging, and not of successive derivation.
Perhaps I ought to add that the true interpretation of
alchemy depends upon a construction of symbolism
which has not entered previously into the heart of
criticism.
At the period of the Holy Graal the books of the
Hermetic Adepts were in a state of transition, or alter-
natively they corresponded to the elements of folk-
lore before the Great Christian Hallow reigned in the
Kingdom of Romance. In other words, the Secret School
of alchemy began in an experimental operation pursued
on material things, but the school was taken over sub-
sequently, though at a time when the Graal literature
was only a sacred memory. It is this mystery which
was the next witness in the world.
Alchemy may not have originated much further East
than Alexandria, or, alternatively, it may have travelled
from China when the port of Byzantium was opened to
the commerce of the world. In either case its first
development, in the forms with which we are acquainted,
is connected with the name of Byzantium, and the
earliest alchemists of whom we have any particulars and
any remains in literature constitute a class by themselves
under the name of Byzantine alchemists. The records
of their processes went further eastward, into Syria
and Arabia, where they assumed a new mode, which
bore, however, all necessary evidence of its origin. In
this form the texts do not appear to have had a specific
influence upon the cor-pus doctrinale of later days. The
records were also taken West, like other mysteries of
536
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
varying importance, and when they began to assume a
place in western history this was chiefly in France,
Germany and England. In other words, there arose
the cycle of Latin alchemy, passing at a later date, by
the way of translation, into the vernaculars of the re-
spective countries, until finally, but much later, we
have original documents in various almost modern
languages. It follows — but has not been noticed so
far — that the entire literature is a product of Christian
times and has Christianity as its motive, whether sub-
consciously or otherwise. This statement applies to the
Latin Geber and even the tracts which are ascribed to
Morien and Rhasis. The dubious and the certain ex-
ceptions which prove the rule are the colloquy of the
Turba Pbilosopborum — about which it is difficult to specu-
late in respect of its source — and the Kabalistic jEsh
Mezarept — which we know only by fragments included
in the great collection of Rosenroth. I suppose that
there is no labyrinth which it is quite so difficult to
thread as that of the Theatrum Chemicum. It is beset
on every side with pitfalls, and its clues, though not
destroyed actually, have been buried beneath the ground.
Expositors of the subject have gone astray over the
generic purpose of the art, because some have believed
it to be (a) the transmutation of metals, and that only,
while others have interpreted it as (b) a veiled method
of delineating the secrets of the soul on its way through
the world within, and besides this nothing. We have
on our part to realise that (a) there were two schools
making use of the same language in a distinct sense,
the one branch seeking the transmutation of metals and
the art of prolonging life, the other branch investigating
the mysteries of arch-natural life ; and that (b) more
than one text-book of physical alchemy would seem to
have been re-edited in this more recent, exotic interest. It
is to the latter that I refer when I speak of an intervention
in alchemy by which it was assumed, and — while pre-
serving the same veils of language — was transformed in
537
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
respect of its purpose. I deal therefore with the corpora
spiritualfa of the mystic school ; we can leave to the
physical alchemists those things of Caesar which belong
to them, retaining the things which concern the mys-
teries of divine symbolism.
The true philosophers of each school are believed
to have taught the same thing, with due allowance for
the generic difference of their term, and seeing that
they used — as I have said — the same language, it would
seem that, given a criterion of distinction in respect of
the term, this should make the body of cryptogram
comparatively easy to disentangle. But as one of the
chief problems is held to reside in the fact that many
text-books do not begin at the same point of the process,
this advantage of uniformity is cancelled largely. There
are affirmed to be experimental schools still existing in
Europe which have carried the physical work much
further than it is ever likely to be taken by an isolated
student ; but this must be accepted under some notable
reserves, or I can at least say that, having better occa-
sions than most people of knowing the schools and their
development, I have so far found no evidence. But
there are known otherwise to be — and I speak here with
the certainty of first-hand acquaintance — other schools,
also experimental, also existing in Europe, which claim
to possess the master-key of the mystical work. How
far they have been successful in using that key, and
whether it opens all locks, I am not in a position to say,
for reasons which those who are concerned will regard
as obvious. It so happens, however, that the mystery
of the process is one thing and that which lies on the
surface, or more immediately beneath the externals of
concealed language, is fortunately another thing. And,
as in this case it occurs for our salvation, the enlightening
correspondences are offering their marks and seals, if
not at our very doors, at least in the official churches.
Among all those places that are holy there is no holy
place in which they do not abide, a mane usque ad vesper-
538
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
tinum, and the name of this correspondence is the Holy
Eucharist.
Before entering further into this matter, I propose
to tabulate certain palmary points of terminology which
are common to all the adepts — including both schools
indifferently, though we are dealing here, and this is
understood fully, with the process of one school. By
the significance of these terms we shall see to what extent
the symbolism of the Higher Alchemy is in conformity
with mystic symbolism and with the repose of the
life of the Church in God. We shall see further in
respect of the operations that some are in correspondence
with that High Mass which was once said in Corbenic.
It should be realised, however, that there is nothing so
hard and so thankless as to elucidate one symbolism
in the words of another, and this notwithstanding the
identity which may be indicated as the term of each.
It should be understood further, and accepted, that
all alchemists, outside the distinctions of their schools,
were actuated by an express determination to veil their
mystery, and that seemingly they had recourse for this
purpose to every kind of subterfuge.
At the same time they tell us that the whole art is
contained, manifested and set forth by means of a
single vessel which, amidst all manner of minor varia-
tions, is described with essential uniformity throughout
the multitude of texts. This statement constitutes a
certain lesser key to the art ; but as on the one hand
the alchemists veil their vas insigne by reference, in
spite of their assurance, to many pretended vessels, so
has the key itself a certain aspect of subterfuge, since
the alleged unity is in respect only of the term final of
the process in the unity of the recipient. This unity
is the last reduction of a triad, because, according to
these aspects of Hermetic philosophy, man in the course
of his attainment is at first three — body, soul and spirit —
that is, when he sets out on the Great Quest ; he is two
at a certain stage — when the soul has conceived Christ,
539
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
for the spirit has then descended and the body is for
the time being outside the Divine alliance ; but he is
in fine one — that is to say, when the whole man has died
in Christ — which is the term of his evolution. So in
the Graal Mystery there are three seekers who attain
after their own measure — Perceval, Bors and Galahad —
who are distinguished from the hereditary incapacity
of Gawain, from the particular inhibition of Lancelot,
and from the external election of the King.
The black state of the alchemical matter, on which
the process of the art is engaged, is the body of this
death — " the dedeley flesshe " — from which the adepts
have asked to be detached. It is more especially our
natural life. The white state of the Stone, the con-
fection of which is desired as a chief term of the art,
is the vesture of that immortality with which the epopts
are clothed upon.
The Salt of the Philosophers is that savour of life
without which the material earth can neither be salted
nor cleansed. The Sulphur of the Philosophers is the
inward substance by which some souls are saved, yet
so as by fire. The Mercury of the Sages is that which
must be fixed and volatilised — naturally it is fluidic and
wandering — but except under this name, or by some
analogous substitute, it must not be described literally
outside the particular circles of secret knowledge. It is
nearer than hands and feet.
Now, the perfect correspondence of these things in
the symbolism of official Christianity, and the great
mystery of perfect sanctification, is set forth in the great
churches under the sacramentalism of the Holy Eucharist,
behind which we see in the liturgies and ritual of the
Graal a high rendering of the same subject under the
same terms, as if there were secret wardens who were
aware of certain insufficiencies and of the way in which
they might be rectified. The same exalted mystery
which lies behind the symbols of Bread and Wine,
behind the undeclared priesthood which is according
540
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
to the Order of Melchisedech, was expressed by the
alchemists under the guise of transmutation ; but it is
understood that I refer here to the secret school of
adeptship which had taken over in another and tran-
scendent interest the terminology and processes of
occult metallurgy. The confusion of distinct symbol-
isms signifying the same thing makes for no illumina-
tion ; but because of the identity in the term, because
both schools deal with the same thing, and because the
same thing is everywhere, the natural analogy of these
symbolisms, distinct as they are, can, by maintaining
their distinction — that is, without mutation of the
accidents — be made to elucidate each other. In the
last resource, therefore, the physician heals himself ; but
I am speaking here of that which wise men have termed
the Medicine.
The vessel is consequently one, but the matter thereto
adapted is not designated especially, or at least after
an uniform manner ; it is said to be clay by those who
speak at times more openly in order that they may be
understood the less, as if they also were singing in their
strange chorus :
" Let us be open as the day
That we may deeper hide ourselves."
It is most commonly described as metallic because on
the surface of the literature there is the declared mystery
of all metals, and the concealed purpose is to show that
in the roots and essence of these things there is a certain
similarity or analogy. The reason is that the epopt
who has been translated again finds his body after many
days, but under a great transmutation, as if in another
sense the pants quotidianus had been changed into the
-panis vivus et vitalis, but — as I have just said — without
mutation of the accidents. The reason is also that in
normal states the body is — here and now — not without
the soul, nor can we separate readily, by any intellectual
process, the soul from the spirit which broods there-
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
over, to fertilise it in a due season. There is, however, one
vessel, and this makes for simplicity ; though it is not
by such simplicity that the art is testified to be a Indus
^uerorum. The contradistinction hereto is that it is
hard to be a Christian, which is the comment of the
man born blind upon the light that he cannot see. It
is the triumphant affirmation of the mystical counter-
position, that to sin is hard indeed for the man who
knows truly. The formula of this is that man is born
for the heights rather than the deeps, and its verbal
paradox is : facilis ascensus su'perno. The process of the
art is without haste or violence by the mediation of a
graduated fire, and the seat of this fire is in the soul.
It is a mystery of the soul's love, and for this reason she
is called " undaunted daughter of desire." The sense
of the gradation is that love is set free from the im-
petuosity and violence of passion, and has become a
constant and incorruptible flame. The formula of
this is that the place of unity is a centre wherein there
is no exaggeration. That which the fire consumes is
certain materials or elements which are called recrementa,
the grosser parts, the superfluities ; and it should be
observed that there are two purgations, of which the
first is the gross and the second the subtle. The first
is the normal process of conversion, by which there is
such a separation of components seemingly external that
what remains is as a new creature, and may be said to be
reborn. The second is the exalted conversion, by which
that which has been purified is so raised that it enters
into a new region, or a certain heaven comes down and
abides therein.
It is not my design in this place to exhaust the sources
of interpretation, because such a scheme would be
impossible in this sub-section, and I can allude therefore
but scantily to the many forms of the parables which
are concerned with the process up to this point. The
ostensible object — which was material in the alternative
school — was the confection of a certain Stone or Powder,
542
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
which is that of projection, and the symbolical theorem
is that this powder, when added to a base metal, per-
forms the wonder of transmutation into pure silver or
gold, better than those of the mines. The Stone trans-
mutes what is base, but in its own elements it has under-
gone transmutation itself, from what is base to what is
perfect. In another form it prolongs life and renews
youth in the adept philosopher and lover of learning.
In this case it is spoken of usually as an elixir, but the
transmuting powder and the renewing draught are really
one thing with the spiritual alchemists. As it is certain
that under any light of interpretation the Stone of
the Graal is not actually and literally a stone — nor found
in the nest of the phoenix — it may be held to follow
as a reasonable inference that the Cup or Chalice is
not a cup actually or literally, much less a vessel which
contains blood, sang real or otherwise. In like manner,
if there is one thing which appears than another more
clearly in the books of the Philosophers, it is that the
Stone of alchemy is not a stone at all, and that the
Elixir of alchemy is not a brew or an essence which can
be communicated in ewers or basins. The Stone, on one
side of its symbolism, represents more especially the
visible sign of the mystery, and it is spoken of as offering
two phases — of which one is white and the other red.
It must be affirmed further that in virtue of a very
high mysticism there is an unity in the trinity of the
stone — or powder — the metal and the vase. The vase
is also the alchemist, for none of the instruments, the
materials, the fires, the producer and the thing produced
are external to the one subject. At the same time
the inward man is distinguished from the outward
man ; we may say that the one is the alchemist and the
other the vessel ; it is in this sense that the art is termed
both physical and spiritual. But the symbolism is many
times enfolded, and the gross matter which is placed
within the vessel is the untransmuted life of reason,
motive, concupiscence, self-interest and all that which
543
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
constitutes the intelligent creature on the normal plane
of manifestation. Hereof is the natural man enclosed in
an animal body, as the metal is placed in the vessel, and
from this point of view the alchemist is he who is some-
times termed arrogantly the super-man. But because
there is only one vessel it must be understood that
herein the Stone is confected and the base metal is
converted. The alchemist is himself finally the Stone,
and because many zealous aspirants to the Art have not
understood this they have failed in the Great Work on
the spiritual side.
The schedule which now follows may elucidate this
hard subject somewhat more fully, if not indeed more
plainly : There are (a) the natural, external man, whose
equivalent is the one vessel ; (b) the body of desire
which answers to the gross matter ; (c) the aspiration,
the consciousness, the will of the supernatural life ;
(d) the process of the will working on the body of desire
within the external vessel ; (e) the psychic and tran-
scendental conversion thus effected ; (/) the re-action of
the purified body of desire on the essential will, so that
the one supports the other, the will is again exalted,
and therefrom follows this further change — that the
spirit of a man puts on a new quality of life, becoming
an instrument which is at once feeding and itself fed ;
(g) herein is the symbol of the Stone and the Great
Elixir ; (h) the spirit is nourished from above by the
analogies of Eucharistic ministry — that is to say, the
Dove descends from Heaven carrying the arch-natural
Host to renew the virtues of the Stone ; (z) the spirit
nourishes the soul, as by Bread and Wine — that is, the
Bread is taken from the Graal ; (k) the soul effects the
higher conversion in the body of desire ; (/) it comes
about thus that the essence which dissolves everything
is still contained in a vessel, or alternatively that God
abides in man.
This process, thus delineated exhaustively in the
parables of alchemy, is put with almost naked simplicity
544
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
by Eucharistic doctrine — which says that material lips
receive the super-substantial Bread and Wine, that
the soul is nourished and that Christ enters the soul.
The Eucharistic Bread signifies the super-substantial
sustenance, and the Wine is arch-natural life. It is
for this reason that the Alchemical Stone at the red
has a higher tingeing and transmuting power than the
Stone at the white. The first matters of the alchemical
work, to make use of another language of subterfuge,
are Sulphur, Mercury and Salt ; but these are the
elements of the Philosophers and not those of the
ordinary kind. In other words, common Sulphur and
Mercury correspond to the Bread and Wine before
consecration, and the philosophical elements are those
which have been transubstantiated by the power of
the secret words. That which is produced is called
Panis Fivus et Fitalis and Vinum Mirabile^ instead of
the daily meat and drink by which we ask to be sustained
in the Lord's Prayer. The Salt is that which is called
the formula of consecration ; it is that which salts and
transmutes the natural earth. When Christ said : " If
the Salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted ? " —
this can be understood of the super-excellent and extra-
valid consecration ; the removal of the Graal signifies
that of a certain arch-natural salting, yet the salt of suffic-
ing grace remains, like that of nature, and in its way
also it communicates. Christ further said : " You are
the salt of the earth " — and this is the true priesthood.
That which the text-books have agreed from time
immemorial to term' a Stone is that also which we find
in greater Gospel books, where it is described as a Stone
not made with hands, and the transmutation performed
thereby is the work of inward conversion, resulting in
the condition which one of the adepts recommends to
his disciples when he exclaims : " Transmutemini, trans-
mutemini h lapidibus mortuis in la-pides vivos philosophiccs"
The possession of the Stone is, in other words, the
possession of the tingeing Christ.
545 2 M
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
It should be understood, therefore, that the First
Matter in transcendence — that is, in the state of the
Stone — must be taken to signify the elements after con-
version has been operated by the secret words of con-
secration. But the words signify here the Divine Life,
and the process which really takes place is represented
by the most sacramental of all words : Et verbum caro
factum est (And the Word was made flesh). In this new
light of alchemy we may continue, if we please, to regard
the elements of the Graal as the communication of the
Eucharist in exaltation, of which our own Eucharist is
only a shadow and substitute ; or we can do what is the
same thing and is preferable in respect of finality, that
is, we can transfer the entire symbolism to man who
is the recipient of the Eucharist, the vessel of reception,
the subject of conversion, the container which in the
outward order is less than the thing contained, the life
which receives the life above all life that is manifest
and known. Without man the conversion and trans-
mutation of elements would be void of all office, since
there would be no terminus ad quern.
Prior to the efficacious consecration we may assume
that the simple elements are those substances, or, if we
prefer it, are that one substance variously manifested,
which, as the alchemists tell us so expressly, may be
found everywhere. It is of no account till the Wise
have introduced their mystical ferment therein. Having
concealed it under a thousand names, they say in their
strange manner that it is known by these ; and so also
some of them have declared in their derision, as against
all the untutored material operations which involve a
prodigal outlay, that he who spends upon the Great
Work more than thirty thalers — not including the cost
of personal maintenance — has already passed aside from
the whole truth of the process. It follows from these
elucidations that the higher understanding of the
Eucharist and the mystic side of alchemy are concerned
with the same subject, that is to say, with man, his
546
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
conversion and transfiguration : the implicits are there-
fore the same, and of these things alchemy was the next
witness in the world after the epoch of the Holy Graal.
But though it seems therefore within all reason and
all truth to testify that the panis vivus et vitalis is even
as the transmuting Stone and that the Chalice of the
New and Eternal Testament is as the renewing Elixir,
the witness is subject to the reserve of my previous
indication ; the closer the analogies between distinct
systems of symbolism the more urgent is that prudence
which counsels us not to confound them by an inter-
changeable use. The priest as priest neither dealt in
the symbolism of alchemy nor assumed its external offices ;
the alchemist as alchemist did not celebrate Mass. It
is true notwithstanding that all Christian mysticism —
whatever its vestures — came out of the Mass-Book, and
it is true that it returns therein. But the Mass-Book
in the first instance came out of the heart mystic which
had unfolded in Christendom. The nucleus of truth in
the Missal is : Dominus -prope est. The Mass shows that
the Great Work is in the first sense a work of the hands
of man, because it is he, officiating as a priest in his own
temple, who offers the sacrifice which he has purified ;
but the elements of that sacrifice are taken over by an
intervention from another Order, and that which follows
is transfusion.
Re-expre3sing all this now in a closer summary, the
apparatus of mystical alchemy is indeed, comparatively
speaking, simple. The first matter is myrionymous and
is yet one, corresponding to the unity of the natural
will and the unlimited complexity of its motives, dis-
positions, desires, passions and distractions — on all of
which the work of wisdom must operate. The vessel is
also one, for this is the normal man complete in his own
degree. The process has the seal of Nature's directness ;
it is the graduation and increasing maintenance of a
particular fire. The initial work is a change in the
substance of will, aspiration and desire, which is the
547
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
first conversion — or transmutation in the elementary
sense. But it is identical, even to the end, with the
term proposed by the Eucharist, which is the modifica-
tion of the noumenal man by the communication of
Divine Substance. Here is the lapis qui non lapis, lapis
tingens, lapis angularis, lapis qui multiplicatur, lapis per
quern Justus tzdificabit domum Domini, et jam valde cedi-
ficatur et terram possidebit per omnia, &c. When it is
said that the Stone is multiplied, even to a thousand-
fold, we know that this is true of all seed which is sown
upon good soil.
So, therefore, the Stone transmutes and the Eucharist
transmutes also ; the philosophical elements on the
physical side go to the making of the Stone, which is
also physical, and the sacramental elements to the genera-
tion of a new life in the soul. He who says Lapis Philo-
sophorum says also : My beloved to me and I to him.
Christ is therefore the Stone, and the Stone in adept
humanity is the Union realised, while the Great Secret
is that Christ must be manifested within.
Now, it seems to me that it has not served less than
an useful purpose to establish after a new manner the
intimate resemblance between the higher understanding
of one part of the Secret Tradition and the fuller inter-
pretation of one Sacrament of the Church. We are not
dealing in either case with the question of attainment.
The analogy would remain if Spiritual Alchemy and
Christian Sacramentalism abode in the intellectual order
as theorems only which have been never carried into
experience. And further it is not affirmed that the
Hermetic symbolism has attained a grade of perfection.
When Christian symbolism took over the old legends
and^created out of them the literature of the Holy Graal,
the work was not done perfectly, and it is the same with
alchemical books. It remains that the doctrine of
sanctity offered'a Divine Experience, to those who entered
the pathway of 'sanctity, as a foretaste*in this life of the
union which is consummated in eternity, or of that end
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
beyond which there is nothing whatever that is con-
ceivable. We know from the old books that " it hath
not entered into the heart of man," but the heart which
has put away the things of sense may at least conceive
it by representations and types. This is the great
tradition of that which the early alchemists term Truth
in the Art ; the experience is representation after its
own kind rather than felicity, but the representation is
of that grade which begins in ecstasy and ends in
absorption. Let no man say therefore that he loses
himself in experiences of this order, for perchance it is
then only that he finds himself, even in that way which
suggests that after many paths of activity he is at length
coming into his own.
The alchemical maxim which might be inscribed on
the gate of the Calais espiriteus or any Castle of the Graal
should be :
" Est in Mercuric quicquid quarunt sapientes."
The Eucharistic maxim which might be written over the
laboratory of the alchemist, in addition to Laborare est
orare, is :
" Et antiquum documentum
Novo cedat ritui :
Presstet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui."
The maxim which might be written over the temples of
the official churches is Corporis Mysterium — that the
mystery of the body might lead them more fully into
the higher mystery of the soul. And in fine the maxim
which might and would be inscribed over the one Temple
of the truly Catholic Religion when the faiths of this
western world have been united in the higher conscious-
ness— that is assuredly Mysterium Fidei — the mystery
which endures for ever and for ever passes into ex-
perience.
Within the domain of the Secret Tradition the initia-
tions are many and so are the schools of thought, but
549
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
those which are true schools and those which are high
orders issue from one root. Est una sola res, and they
whose heart of contemplation is fixed upon this one
thing may differ but can never be far apart. Personally
I do not believe — and this has the ring of a common-
place— that they will be found to differ widely. I know
not what systems of the aeons may intervene between
that which is imperishable within us and the union
wherein the universe will in fine repose at the centre.
But I know that the great systems — aye, even the great
processes — of the times that are gone, as of those which
now encompass us, do not pass away, because that which
was from the beginning is now and ever shall be — is
one motive, one aspiration, one term of thought remain-
ing, as if in the stillness of an everlasting present. We
really understand one another, and our terms are terms
over which our collective aspirations are united world
without end.
IV
THE KABALISTIC ACADEMIES
We have now dealt with the testimony of the chief
witness to the perpetuity and perfection of the Great
Experiment, and if it be necessary — as it is at times
and seasons — to conceal or re-express things in an
artificial and evasive language, I do not know of a more
convincing substituted terminology than that of trans-
mutation by alchemy as a high analogy of God's work
in the soul. Other analogies there are, but for the most
part unrealised, as, for example, the sublime clause of
the Apostle's Creed : " Et expecto resurrectionem mor-
tuorum et vitam venturi sceculi" which, as it stands, is
a testimony to the prospect and not the attainment.
The motives which lead to the adoption of artificial
language and the circumstances which may help to
justify it belong to the term of our inquiry, of which
550
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
this is the penultimate stage only. We have now
finished for the present with the Mystery of Attainment
— or why it was necessary to seek and find the Holy
Graal in order that the spiritual knight might in fine
be assumed into Heaven, carrying the Palladium with
him into those stars whence it first descended ; and we
have next to determine whether there are other traces
which may help us to understand better the Mystery
of Loss, or the meaning of the Voided Sanctuary. It
is admitted out of hand that the first indications are
placed here in respect of the order of time, and that
they are introductory and subsidiary only — a place of
sidelights and incidental correspondences. The reason
is that, although the root-matters must be identical
when the term in finality is one, we are dealing in respect
of the Graal with a manifestation in Christendom but
here with a manifestation in Israel.
The schools of Kabalism can scarcely be said to have
done more than emerge partly into public existence
when the canon of the Graal literature had already
closed ; in these schools there were great masters of
mystic thought, though more especially on the intellectual
side. Now, in its own way, the theosophical scheme of
Jewry in exile is a story of loss like the Graal, though
it is one which ends in expectation — or, as I should say,
in certainty. The loss in external history and in national
life was counterpoised by a loss in the sanctuary, as if
the arch-natural Eucharist, the Graal which is of all
things holy, had been taken therefrom. It was that
which of old was written not only in one galaxy of
stars but by the power of which the worlds themselves
were made. The substitution which, according to the
Graal legends, was left with the Christian Church in
place of the living sanctities is paralleled closely by that
other legend which tells how the stress and inhibition of
Israel is because the Divine Word has been withdrawn
from the Holy Place, and instead of the true Tetragram,
the voice of the priest only pronounces now the name
55'
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Adonai. But the Eucharist, as I have said, is still the
Eucharist, the House from which the Graal has departed
is still the Holy House, and all sanctity attaches in like
manner to the substituted sacred Name and to the
cortex of those letters which now represent the Tetra-
gram — mn\ There was a time when this name in
its true form was pronounced by the High Priest once
annually in the sanctuary ; it restored the people of
God and maintained the Inmost Shrine, keeping open
the channels of grace, even as the heavenly dove, descend-
ing on Good Friday, renewed the virtue of the Graal.
Afterwards, as I have indicated, there came another
time when disaster fell upon Israel, with the result
that the essential elements of the Name, in which its
true pronunciation was involved, became lost even to
the sanctuary.
It should be scarcely necessary to say that I am not
putting forward the hypothesis of a channel of com-
munication by which something was derived into
romance literature from implicits which about the same
time or subsequently were developed into Zoharic
books. I know that behind the Graal Castle — according
to the Longer Prose \Perceval — there was the Earthly
Paradise, and that the^House of the Holy Vessel was also
the Castle of Souls. I know that, according to the
Zohar, the Garden of Eden is placed in a position which
corresponds to that of the Graal itself. I know that
both were removed — the Graal into the heavenly regions
and the Garden of Eden into that which is no longer
manifest. The latter place was connected nearly in
Kabalism with the Great Sanctuary — truly a Castle of
Souls — wherein all those who are to come await incar-
nation in turn, for, according to Jewish theosophy, the
creation of souls is not successive, or dependent on
earthly generation, but eternal in the heavens. I know
that there is nothing in literature so like the departure
of Galahad as that of R. Simeon ben Jochai ; and in
spite of great divergences, of distinctions in the root-
552
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
matter, the Mystery of the Holy Graal has its sub-
surface analogy with the Mystery of the Lesser Holy
Assembly. I know that the Greater and Lesser Sanhedrim
sound like oracular voices speaking in an unknown
tongue concerning the Holy House, and we feel that
behind the outward offices of religion there was an
Inner Church of Israel. I know that, according to the
involved scheme of the Sepbiroth, the Waters of Life are
in Knowledge, which is also the place of the Cup, and
this is reserved always for those who are athirst. But
these things, with others and many others, do not
constitute the lightest shadow of transmission. No
French poet could be expected to know thereof ; no
exponent of Christian legend, even when interpreted
mystically, ever looked to Israel for light and leading in
those internecine days — however much the name of
Provence may suggest a certain difference in mind from
the prevalent orthodoxy of the age. That there may
be no mistake on this subject among those whom I
address more especially, I note further that the peculiar
presentation of Graal symbolism which is connected
with the name of the reputed Provencal Guiot — who
of all only might confess to some curious memories
from a course of study at Toledo — is precisely that
presentation in which the sanctuary is not voided and
the Graal is not taken away.
It is a matter of common knowledge that at the
period in question Spain was one place in the world
where the Jews were not merely free from raging perse-
cution but where worldly positions of importance were
open to their competition. We know further that a
treat light of Moslem learning shone forth in some
panish academies. We know finally or may learn that
another light had kindled therein among the chosen
people themselves. Palestine and the East generally
thereabouts may have contributed its portion, and did
indeed do so, but the heart and marrow of Kabalism
was in Spain. The Jews of Cordova, the Jews of Toledo
553
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and of other places in the Peninsula look great figures
in the literature, and so also do certain academies of
Southern France, though there the Jews did not find
the same peace in their abodes. For them the asylum
was Spain, and that indeed must have been little less
than a Terrestrial Paradise realised. And as between
the South of France and Spain the channels of com-
munication stood wide open, as Provence is the legendary
place of the first Graal quest, as the Ideal Castle, the
Holy Place, Mont Salvatch, had its abode unapproachable
in the Pyrenees, so the imaginative mind may perhaps
incline to say that behind the strange legend of the
Jew of Toledo there is something undemonstrable of
a lost Graal connection ; yet this is the stuff only of
which dreams are made, and it is well for my own case.
The analogy between all the schools in succession is
the testimony which they bear in common, and if after
other manners they reflected one into another the
witness would be weaker in proportion. There is no
concert, there is no debt in literature, there is no result
in fine, as by a course of development from cycle to
cycle of books. The scheme of theosophical Kabalism
is distinct, and absolutely, from that of metaphysical
alchemy ; it is the evidence of two schools which did
not know one another, and, although at the root their
evidence is of the same kind, the relation between them
is that of the pairs of opposites. So also when another
and no less noteworthy voice began to speak within the
body-legendary of symbolical Masonry, it said what
Kabalism had said, but it was not Kabalism speaking
behind a later mask. As I must look to be challenged
in the gate over the thesis of this book, I assume at this
point so much harness as will suffice to dissuade the
gentlemen of the counter-guard from considering that
I am open to attack as one who seeks to explain that
generic literature A is the concealed father of generic
literature B, though I speak more seriously as a counsel
to some of the confraternities with which I am affiliated
554
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
in thought and the pursuit of a term in common. When
it is said that God so loved the world, the counterpart
in Kabalism is that the Kingdom is in no sense apart
from the Crown, and that the progression from Aleph
to Tan is complete without break or intermission ;
but St. Paul is not for that reason a precursor of the
Zohar. So also when the Arabian Academies of Spain
became the resort of Christian scholars — " men of curious
inquiry," as one has said concerning them — it does not
mean that from such schools they brought back Sufic
mysticism and translated it into romance. It does not
mean that there also they met with the corpus materiale
of the Kabalah, a final receptacle of the dtbris and
drift of all the old theogonies, theosophies and occult
knowledge of many places and periods, or that learning
there how the Daughter of the Voice was withdrawn
from the sanctuary of Israel, they told in another
tongue how, after the departure of the Graal, the
dwelling of King Fisherman " began to fall," though
the chapel thereto belonging never " wasted nor de-
cayed." The voices say one thing, but they do not
speak in concert. We know only and realise that Israel
is waiting by the waters of Babylon, and it has come to
pass that, though we draw from far other places, we are
also beside her, remembering, perhaps more dimly and
yet with deeper yearning, the glory that once was in
Zion.
Of such was the mind of Kabalism, its appanage, its
baggage and its quest.
THE CLAIM IN RESPECT OF TEMPLAR
INFLUENCE
I suppose that there is no one at this day, even on the
outermost fringes of the wide world of books, who will
need to be acquainted with the fact that the old chivalry
555
'The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
of the Temple was instituted as a protection to the
Christian pilgrims who visited the Holy Places of Jeru-
salem in the first quarter of the twelfth century. It was
a military and religious organisation ab origine symboli,
differing as such from the Hospital of St. John, which
at its incorporation was a healing fraternity, and only
assumed arms following the example of the Militia
Crucifera Evangelica which had arisen suddenly at its
side. Templar history is a great storehouse of enchant-
ing hypothesis and also of unreclaimed speculation
repeated from writer to writer. I know no greater sea
on which ships of imagination and fantasy have launched
more boldly ; if they have reached no final harbour,
they have paused to take in further stores at innumerable
" summer isles " of an imaginary Eden " lying in dark
purple spheres of sea," and if in some undemonstrable
way they have slipped their cables and eluded sporadic
hostile vessels, this has been because the equipment of
the latter has not been better than their own, white as
regards credentials the letter of marque carried by the
unwelcome visitor would often not bear much closer
inspection than their own unchartered licence. Now,
an Order which was established in the East for a specific
Christian purpose, which embodied ideas of devotion
that were ecclesiastical as well as religious, which accepted
monastic vows — even those counsels of perfection that
qualified for the Quest of the Graal — yet, in spite of these,
which became wealthy in the corporate sense beyond
the dreams of avarice, insolent and haughty beyond
the prerogatives of feudal royalty, and had darker charges
looming against it, does assuredly offer a picture
to research the possibilities of which are likely to be
exploited in all directions. The story of the brother-
hood and the things implied therein have been therefore
approached from many points of view, enforced by
many considerations and by much which passes for
evidence. I speak — as it will be understood — here of
the things recognised or divined beneath its external
55*
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
surface, for on that side there is nothing more direct
and more simple. We know that the Latin Church
has a heavy account to balance in respect of the Order,
and by the characteristics of the charges preferred it is
also responsible for having brought it — whether warrant-
ably or otherwise, but at least all unwittingly — within
the dubious circle of the Secret Tradition in Christian
times, for a considerable proportion of those who recog-
nise the fact of the Tradition. It remains, however,
that from this standpoint the story has never been told
at all by any one who spoke with knowledge on so
involved a subject. Here there is no place to attempt
it, but the Mystery of the Temple in a minor degree
interpenetrated the Mystery of the Graal, and some-
thing must be said concerning it in this connection.
There is at the present time in England (a) an extending
disposition to appreciate remotely and dimly an im-
bedded evidence that the romance-literature did some-
how shadow forth an initiatory process — but this I have
hinted previously ; and (b) that in some manner not
yet understood the Knights Templars and the Graal
legend grew up together, and will answer with strange
voices if set to question one another across the void
which intervenes between an externalised chivalry in
fact and an ideal knighthood in books. In a word, the
literature has been held sometimes to represent, within
clouds and under curious veils, something of the imputed
Templar subsurface design, or alternatively certain
Graal texts do at least indubitably reflect in their own
manner, on their own authority, the Knighthood of the
Morning and of Palestine raised from the world of
reflections into the world of the archetype. The Longer
Prose Perceval is not only a work with an allegorical and
also a mystic motive ; it is not only the story of a sup-
pressed word, of the sorrow and suffering which were
wrought by that suppression, and the joy and deliver-
ance which followed the recovery of the word ; it is
not only the prototypical correlative of the legend of
557
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the Royal Arch and the eighteenth degree in a form not
less clear because it can be traced only by a specialist ;
but — at least in adventitious ways — it has ever-recurring
characters of Templar symbolism. But that which
wears herein — and so through the French cycle — little
more than the aspect of accident, passes in the Parstfal
of Wolfram into the appearance of a preconceived plan.
Herein is the story of a confraternity, partly military
but in part also religious, connecting by the legend of
its lineage with a kind of secret history in Christendom
written under the guise of knight-errantry ; it is the
romance of an Order of the Holy Graal whose members
are chosen out of thousands, dedicated, set apart, and
sometimes terrible in power, almost " like Cedron in
flood." I do not wonder that before the face of this
picture the criticism of the Graal literature has been
haunted here and there with the dream of Templar
intervention, and the only question which concerns us
is the extent to which such an hypothesis can be justified.
Even in the least illuminated circles the possibility is
regarded with increasing respect, and apart from any
claims on its own basis it would be difficult for this
reason to pass it over entirely. The imputed fact, or the
likelihood, that the literature was a vehicle, officially or
otherwise, of some mystical tradition, without depending
for any one on the merits of this hypothesis, would in
certain minds be enhanced substantially thereby. But
it is desirable to note, in the first place, that it is now
an old speculation ; secondly, that recent years have
not brought to light, that I am aware, any new facts on
the subject ; and, lastly, that in so far as the contention
is put freshly there is a disposition to dwell on the
<7 'em-pleisen depicted in the Parsifal as not only a militant
body but also a governing theocracy, and one which
above all things was not ecclesiastical. It is just this
which impresses me as perhaps a little exaggerated in
tone : I do not know that Amfortas and his chivalry
can be called a governing power any more than the
558
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
company over-ruled by King Pelles of Lytenoys, of
whose warfare we hear in the Vulgate Merlin. If
Mont Salvatch was anything of the kind, it was obviously
a secret kingdom, and as much might be said of Corbenic
and the realm to which it belonged. Seeing also that
the keepers of the Graal and the cohort of their ministers
had at no time a sacerdotal aspect — some express claims
notwithstanding as to their geniture and their ministers —
the ecclesiastical note therein is wanting through all the
cycles ; the distinction in chief between the Templeisen
and the other knights of the Graal is that in Wolfram the
former are elaborately organised, while the latter are
either an inchoate gathering or they are merely the
retinue which would be attached to a feudal castle.
In one case, which is that of the Didot Perceval, the
House Mystic is perhaps a simple tower, which, from
all that we learn by the context, might be little more
than a hermit's hold.
It is obviously one thing to say that Wolfram modelled
his chivalry on the prototype of the Knights Templars —
which is an interesting fact without consequence — and
another that the modelling was inspired by a familiarity
with Templar secret intention, and it is on this point,
which is obviously the hypothesis in its motive, that
reasonable evidence is wanted. The next step is to
recognise tendances suspectes in the poem of Wolfram,
to predicate them of Guiot, his precursor, and to regard
the Templar design — whatever otherwise it was — as
anti-Catholic in its spirit. With the first ascription I
have dealt in discussing the German cycle in general ;
of the second we can divine little, and then but darkly ;
while in respect of the third I recur to that canon of
criticism which has served me well already : in so far
as the Templar Order is held to be anti-Catholic, it is
antecedently and proportionately unlikely that any
evidence will connect it with the Graal literature.
Whatever the origin of that literature, as we now have
it, in one and all its forms, it is not merely a Catholic
559
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
legend, but it seems so to have issued from the heart
and centre of Catholicity that it is almost in the likeness
of an exotic, as if from some sanctuary behind the
external and visible sanctuary of the universal Church.
If this is the heart of romance going out in its yearning
towards God, there was never a heart in Christendom
" which warmer beat and stronger." It is like the
voice of that ideal city, the first city, the spiritual city,
of which Wagner spoke, and it is seldom heard on earth ;
it seems to speak from the pictured home of the soul,
the place of pre-existence, with all the mystery and
wonder of enchanted Hud and of Ir6m in the Land of
the Morning. And in the melody of that voice, within
the verbal message thereof, we know that the country
deep in Asia is not to be found in any Highlands beyond
the Himalayas, or in the fabled Sarras. Again, it is
the country of the soul and of the soul's legend ; it is
the Kabalistic place of the palaces at the centre of the
dimensions, sustaining all things. We know also that
we shall look vainly for Corbenic on the wild coast of
Wales, and for the local habitation of the Graal Castle
of Mont Salvatch at any of the grand passes of the
Pyrenees into Spain ; for this also is like the Rosicrucian
mountain of Abiegnus and the mystic Fir-Cone, a
mystery enfolded within and without by many meanings.
But if such is the position in respect of the Holy
Graal, and if it follows therefrom that in some hands it
has rested under a serious cloud of misapprehension,
there is something to be said on the same subject, though
not in the same sense, in respect of the Knights Templars.
The eye which has turned from the Graal literature to
the records of the great chivalry has been drawn in that
direction because of the charge of heresy which was
preferred of old against it. I am not designing to
suggest that the side of criticism which is prominent in
the open day is interested — or much less concerned
seriously — in heresy as such, though I confess — if it be
fitting to say so — that next to the truth which is of God
560
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
and the deeps therein, whereof simple minds dream
nothing, I am conscious of few things more fascinating
than the story of the bad old doctrines and of those
who loved, followed and honoured them. It draws the
mind for ever with vague and preposterous hopes ; and
seeing further that I am on the side of the orthodox
faith only in so far as the old mule which carries the
mysteries can be shown to be on God's side — as the
High History testifies — I do not doubt that many are
the choses suspectes which might be gleaned from this
book, and many there may still be who could wish to
include its writer in the annals carried forward of
Smithfield or Tyburn and those who went thither in
the days of Mary or Elizabeth.
Here is cleansing confession ; but scholarship, as I
have intimated, is detached, subject to its inoculation
by the notion of pagan faiths perpetuated through
Christian centuries — the stilettos of which virus have
pierced me also in both arms. But I believe, apart
from such images, that I carry a lamp which enlightens
these obscure ways, and much as I may love their
crookedness, they do not deceive me. It is on this
account precisely that the heresy of the Temple, so
far as it concerns the Graal, can be dealt with shortly
here, for which purpose I will go back as early as my
knowledge of the criticism extends along these lines.
The summary of the particulars in chief may be grouped
together as follows : (i) In the year 1825, Von Hammer,
an orientalist of the period, identified certain baptismal
fonts or vases — which he included among antique
memorials of the Templars — as examples of the true
San Graal vessels, and as he connected Templar secret
doctrine with that of the Gnostics, he remembered that,
according to Epiphanius, the Marcosians made use of
three large vases in their celebration of the Eucharist.
These were filled with white wine, which was supposed
to undergo a transformation of colour and other magical
changes. (2) In the year 1828, the Abbe" Gr£goire
561 2 N
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
expressed a conviction that Christ transmitted to St.
John the Evangelist a secret doctrine which descended
ultimately to the Templars. (3) In the year 1834
Gabriele Rossetti affirmed that the Templars belonged
to secret societies, and that they professed doctrines
inimical to Rome ; but though much has been hazarded
concerning their opinions, nothing has been ascertained
conclusively. He held further that they were of Egyptian
derivation and that from them the Albigenses emanated.
Here I am reminded of a rumour regarding a manu-
script said to be in the Louvre, but of which I know
nothing, either as to title or claims ; it is reported to
state that the Templars originated from a more ancient
Order, called the Magian Brothers. (4) In the year
1854 it was sustained by Eugene Aroux that all the
archaic romances of the Holy Graal were written to
glorify the Order of the Temple and to present its
doctrine in the form of romance. (5) In the year 1858
the same writer went further and suggested that the
Templars were parties to a concealed programme for the
creation at Jerusalem of a religious and military rival of
the power and orthodoxy at Rome. (6) In the year
1842 Dr. K. Simrock expressed an opinion that the
doctrine and tradition of the Templars were based on
the tradition of the Graal ; that Christ had been
instructed by the Essenes ; that he confided a secret
knowledge to some of his disciples ; and that this was
imparted subsequently to the priests of the Temple
chivalry. (7) In 1844, writing on the influence of
Welsh tradition, it was hazarded by A. Schulze that
the symbols and doctrines of the Templars might have
been borrowed from the Graal. (8) In 1865 Louis
Moland in his Origines Littlraires considered that the
Graal legend and the Templar Order were expressions
in literature and life of the same ideal, being the union
of knighthood with sanctity, and he further stated
(a) that there was a strange Templar reflection in a
literature which was unquestionably and closely related
562
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
with the principles of that Order ; (b) that the Roman
Curia interdicted the Graal romances coincident!/ with
the suppression of the knightly Order. It will be seen
that the root of this thesis is identical with that of
Schulze.
The summary above has of necessity omitted many
allocations and many hazards of hypothesis which might
have been collected from other sources. Our next step
is to ascertain from the charges against the Templars in
the course of the processes instituted by the ecclesi-
astical Courts of France, and elsewhere, what were the
heresies of doctrine and practice imputed to the chivalry.
Setting aside those which constituted infringements of
the Decalogue and sins crying to heaven for vengeance,
the major accusations were two — that candidates for
reception into the Order were required to deny Christ
and offer a ceremonial outrage to the Cross, as the
symbol of his Passion. The minor accusations were
many, but after disentangling the alleged cultus of the
Baphometic head and some other things which I rule
outside our concern, they are reducible also to two,
being (i) the secular absolution from sin which was
said to be given by the Grand Master in open chapter,
or alternatively, I believe, by the preceptors of local
commanderies and encampments ; (2) a practice in
respect of the Eucharist which did not involve exactly
a denial in doctrine, but exhibited hostility thereto.
The first is important because in a qualified form it
was the only charge which was held proven against
the Templars as a result of the examinations in Eng-
land ; but it is on the second that the whole thesis with
which we are concerned breaks down. The accusation
was that in consecrating the Blessed Sacrament, the
necessary and efficacious words were omitted. The
evidence adduced on this question included that of an
English priest who had once officiated for the Templars
and who was forbidden to recite the Clause of Institution.
I do not propose to report upon the validity of the
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charges in whole or in detail ; those who are concerned
must be referred — if they can summons such patience
for their aid — to the Latin process of the trial, which
was published many years since in France. The
Templars have been accused by learned people of
Gnosticism, Manichaeanism, Albigensianism, on the
authority of those memorials ; but there is no evidence
for such charges ; it is wanting also for the other specu-
lations which are included in my summary above ; and,
in fine, there is none also for the suggested Graal con-
nections, though I confess that my researches were begun
in an expectation of the kind. The Templars, if guilty,
as affirmed of old on the worst of all possible authority,
were in the position of the heresies in Southern France ;
they reduced, denied, derided, or stood in fear of the
Eucharist, and therefore the abyss intervenes between
them and a literature which existed to exalt it. As
regards the German Parsifal, it possesses the putative
tendances suspectes to which I have referred in more than
one connection. It may be said that the Host which came
from heaven was a designed antithesis to the Host con-
secrated on earth, but I believe that this is fantasy,
because to hear an ordinary Mass was as much a duty
of knighthood according to Wolfram, as we find it in
the Quest of Galahad, the Longer Prose Perceval and
any of the other romances. I believe in my heart that
the instituted analogy between the T emfleisen of Mont
Salvatch and the great Order of Chivalry was natural
and irresistible in the mind of the poet who conceived
it — whether Wolfram or Guiot ; I believe that it is
the only connection and, as I have said, that nothing
follows therefrom. I believe that the sole Eucharistic
privilege enjoyed by the Templars was a decree which
permitted them to celebrate one Mass annually in places
under interdict ; that they were militantly papal ; that
there were next to no instances in which they renounced
their faith, much as they may have dishonoured it by their
lives ; and that their foundation under the patronage of
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
la doce mere de Dieu represented their ecclesiastical ideal.
I believe in fine that their first principles were expressed
on their behalf in the Epistle of St. Bernard ad Milites
Templi. It was written at the instance of Hugo, the first
Commander, and this fact is all that need be derived from
the prologue. The text itself exhorts the new institu-
tion to strive with intrepid souls against the enemies of
the Cross of Christ, because those to whom death is a
reward and life is Christ need fear nothing. Let them
stand for Christ therefore, rather desiring to be dis-
solved, that they may be with Him. Let them live in
good fellowship, having neither wives nor children. A
later section concerns that external Temple from which
their particular title was taken, and it compares the
glories of the House built by Solomon with the inward
grace of that to which the Order was attached in the
spirit. In other words, this was for St. Bernard a house
not made with hands, since the chivalry was itself a
Temple, and, like that of Masonry, the edifice was erected
in the heart. The brethren are in fact described as a
Holy City ; they are connected with the idea of the
Church itself ; and the enumerated details of the Holy
Place are used for spiritual exhortation addressed to the
knighthood. The promise to Zion that its wilderness
shall become an abode of all delights, its solitude a
garden of the Lord echoing with joy and gladness, with
thanksgiving and the voice of praise, is said to be the
heritage of the Order, and to watch over their heavenly
treasure should be their chief care — so acting that in
all things He should be pleased Who guides their arms
to the battle and their hands to the warfare.
Whether it profits to add more I question, but this I
will say at least — that I am sacrificing all my predilections
and making my task in the next book much harder by
throwing over the Templar hypothesis, not alone in its
connection with the Graal on the historical side, but as
one of the channels through which the Secret Tradition
may have passed in Christian times. I cannot say even
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that I speak under correction, for I question that correc-
tion is possible. I have searched many of these byways
with an anxious eye for the evidence, and I have been
haunted with the dreams of those who went before me
in the way, but I have returned so far with hands empty.
I can therefore say only : magis arnica veritas.
VI
THE GRAAL FORMULA IN THE LIGHT OF
OTHER GLEANINGS FROM THE CATHOLIC
SACRAMENTART
The Secret Orders illustrate the realised life of sanctity
on the plane of symbolism, but if it were tolerable to
suppose that the literature of alchemy was put forward
by an instituted confraternity, then that would be the
one association which "per doctrinam sanctam had gone
apparently beyond symbolism and reached the catholic
heart of all experience. On the question of fact, I
believe that the Hermetic adepts had a via secretissima
which was communicated from one to another under
self-enforcing covenants — because it was Sacramentum
Regis — and that at least the best among them were not
incorporated formally. The adepts of the physical work
had successive fellowships — and so also had the seekers
thereafter — which we can trace at different periods ; but
these do not concern us. The others exchanged the
watchwords of the Night and the vision of Aurora
breaking in the soul ; they left their memorials in books
as guides one to another, saying what they best could
about that which was never expressed openly and caring
little, except under God's will, whether there were any
listeners, since it could not fail that the light should
remain somehow in the world. Outside the wisdom of
the very Church itself, they are the greatest witnesses
in the age of Christ to the truth of its greatest experi-
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
ment. The literature of the Holy Graal — in some of
its aspects — is also a witness, and chiefly to the depth
and wonders of the Catholic Mass. After all the worlds
of language have been exhausted, I conceive that we
have approximated only to those wonders and have
sounded, here and there, only with short lines and un-
adapted plummets those immeasurable deeps. The
keyword of the whole Mystery is sacramentum mirabile.
O mirabile indeed and sacramentum in all truth, but
because of the words that fail us, we must perforce fill
the great intervening breaks even with the little books
of popular devotion ; and when the dark sayings of
Paracelsus in De Caena Domini have failed to satisfy us,
we must even see whether the learned Dr. Ralph
Cudworth on The Lord's Supper — demonstrating many
follies — may not have a chance word there or here in
his pages which will open, outside all knowledge of his
own, some gate that we had passed without thinking !
Here therefore are a few gleanings from the Catholic
Sacramentary as further sidelights on the most catholic
of all experiments — the Quest of the Graal.
If ever there was a verbal formula of Eucharistic con-
secration concealed by some school in the Church — if
ever a time came when there was something missing
from any Mass, Celtic or another — I believe that God
has filled the vacant space with channels of sufficing
grace, and that grace efficacious is not so very far away
from any illuminated heart. The fact however remains
that it is not ready to our hands, and that though we
say Introibo we do not enter and go in, except into the
outer sanctuary. For this reason we feel a divine and
loving envy when we hear what Galahad and Perceval
saw after the material visions had passed away, when
there was no longer any doctrine of transubstantiation
made sensible, but only les esperitueus choses. So also
the gracious and piteous legend haunts us for ever, and
we are aware that we have dwelt overlong in Logres and
know the loss thereof.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
It has been said, I believe, by a certain school of
interpretation, which has not so far satisfied the other
schools in respect of its titles, that the Graal vessel is
that which contains the universe. There is unfortu-
nately some disposition to put forward suppositions on
the basis of research in other fields, and without specific
acquaintance with the field covered by the speculation
taken thus lightly in hand. The statement in question
is not true in the sense that is intended, though it is
exhaustive in its accuracy from another standpoint, and
this in a dual manner : (a) because those who receive that
Eucharist of which it is the symbol, in the highest grade
and manner of reception, do behold the beginning and
the end ; and (b) because man in this manner enters into
the consciousness of himself as being actually the vessel
of reflection which testifies of everything without to
the centrum concentratum within. In such sense we
may all pray that the time shall come when man will
reflect in his universal glass of vision that truth which
is within the universe and not only its external im-
pressions. When this comes to pass it can be said of
him, as it was said once of Perceval : Et li seintimes Greax
ne s'aperra plus fa dedanz, ; mes vos sauroiz bien trus-
qu?a brief la ou il iera — And the most Holy Graal shall
appear herein no more, but in a brief space shall you
know well the place where it shall be.
The age which saw the production of the Graal
literature was, in all the public places, far from this
goal like ourselves ; the communication of Him who is
Alpha and Omega, who brings with Him the knowledge
of the beginning and the end, took place in the symbol,
not in the life essential, and the first-hand revelation
of Mysteries was therefore wanting. That which
doctrine and ordinary devotional practice contrived to
impress upon men's memories and to impose on their
faith offered an exercise to their intelligence, but in the
activity intelligence was baffled. The sword of the
spirit broke upon the ineffable mystery of the Kingdom
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
of Heaven, as the symbolic sword of Perceval broke
upon^the gate of entrance to the Earthly Paradise. The
hermit-priest who tells his wonderful story at the in-
ception of the Book of the Holy\Graal is in labour with
the problem of the Trinity, and when his praying and
longing have carried him to the Third Heaven, it is
this secret of the Eternal Sanctity which is unveiled
before the eyes of his soul. Many noble and learned
clerks, hermits and anchoresses innumerable, did not
toil less hard, but without reaping so high a reward.
They also who wrote of these wonders in the best sense
thereof had their limitations, and keenly defined enough.
It is so that we must account for certain grave confusions
in respect of the Divine Personality of Christ, and
perhaps not differently for those vague traces of doctrine
belonging to a very early period and abandoned as the
mind of the Church grew clearer in the comprehension
of her own dogmas.
It is so also that I account personally for the material
side of the Graal wonders ; to say that they have come
over from folk-lore is a statement of fact simply, and
does not explain their toleration not only by side and by
side therewith but as a part of the Mystery of Faith. Yet
there was also a superincession of the gross old pagan
myth and the recognised implicit of Eucharistic doctrine
that the nourishment of the soul has a reflex action by
which it contributes to physical welfare. The man
who attends Mass, prepared suitably thereto, profits in
all degrees, and for him who communicates in the
higher state of grace it must be remembered that the
consecrated symbols of Bread and Wine, through which
the Divine is conveyed to the man within, pass through
the mouth and the reins and may, as tradition and
experience have testified, convey to the natural humanity
some part and reflection of that grace which is declared
abundantly in the other side of his being. It is in this
sense that the body as well as the soul can testify at
the altar rails that it is good to be here. A very subtle
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
point is developed in this connection by the mystic and
theologian GOrres, who affirms that in ordinary nourish-
ment he who eats being superior to that which is eaten
assimilates the elements which he receives, but in the
Eucharist the transmuted nourishment is more potent
than is he who partakes, and instead of being assimilated
by him, it is the nutriment which assimilates the man
and raises him to a superior sphere. Because of the
solidarity between body, soul and spirit, I say therefore
that the solus, honor, virtus quoque which descend upon
our higher part have also their operation below. The
food-giving powers of the Graal are not therefore a
reflection of the e-pulum ex oblatis but a reductio ad
fabulam of the spiritual truth that Grace sustains Nature,
and a guarantee in perpetuity that the Quest of the
Kingdom of God will never fail for the want of external
taverns carrying a full licence at all points of the way.
The Dish of Plenty is therefore the simulacrum of
Manna abscondita, and the priest who says Mass in his
chapel carefully and recollectedly, and with illumina-
tion, by word and by word, turning at the due time to
utter his sursum corda in the right sense, is doing more
in the fellowship of humanity than all the corporal
works of mercy pressed down and overflowing. He
will be assuredly inspired in his reason to organise
charity, so that his people shall be fitly prepared to
receive the Eucharist worthily, that he may give it
freely with open and venerable hands. As regards the
lesser and material side of charity, the broken meats
and the garlic, with the tokens of Caesar, he will pro-
bably adopt some rule of relaxed observance, as it is
good enough in these minima for God to find out His
own, and He will give anywhere.
In respect further of the Manna itself, the Longer Prose
Perceval gets, sacramentally speaking, nearest of all to the
Mystery when it indicates the exaltation of the recipient
by five in the five manifested changes. The text indeed
is like a prolonged Hosannah or a Gloria in excelsis chanted
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
from scene to scene in a great cycle of questing. The
same note runs through all the legends, and its last echo
is heard faintly in the late Lohengrin romance. In this
Swan story, the chain of one of the Swans was made
into two chalices, and, Mass being said therein, the bird
was restored to his proper and human form. This is
an Eucharistic allegory concerning the deligation of the
body by Divine Substance communicated to the soul,
putting a period to the enchantments and sorceries of
the five senses.
I conclude therefore with St. Dionysius that the
Eucharist is the first of the Divine Mysteries which
now are ; with the Paraphrase of St. Maximus, that it
is the consummation of all other sacraments ; and with
official doctrine in the Latin Church, that it operates
by intrinsic efficacity, ex of ere o-perato, in virtue of its
institution by Christ.
VII
THE LAPIS EXILIS
According to Wolfram von Eschenbach, the Graal was
the crown of desire understood on the material plane,
but it would also respond to the title which was given
by Heinrich to his independent version of the legend,
for it was certainly the crown of adventure, and on more
planes than one. It was borne aloft on a green cushion
by the maid who was chosen for the office, and this
suggests that the object was, speaking comparatively,
small — that is to say, portable. There is nothing in the
whole poem to make us connect it with a jewel in the
conventional sense, and it is nowhere described actually :
it is simply that object of wonder to which the name of
Graal is given. It was light as wool, as we have seen,
in the hands of its licensed bearer, but an unprepared
person could not move it from the place of its repose.
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
This is rather, however, a question of magic than of varia-
tion in specific gravity. Ex hypothesi, it was large enough
on one specific occasion to hold a considerable inscription
on its surface — that is to say, when the King's healing
was promised as the reward of the mystic question. At
the same time its possible dimensions were restricted by
the counter fact that it could and did repose in the nest
of a bird which tradition describes as about the size of
an eagle. Indeed, the stone which renewed the phoenix
recalls the Lapis Aquilce, which, according to another
tradition, was sought by the eagle and used to assist the
hatching of its eggs.
This enumeration is made to preface some reflections
upon the Latin term which Wolfram applied to his
talisman. What he wrote — or his scribe rather — we
have to divine as we can from the choice of impossibilities
which are offered by the extant manuscripts, and that
which has received most countenance among the guess-
work readings is Lapis exilis, meaning the slender stone.
The scholia of lexicographers on the second of these
words indicate some difference of opinion among the
learned on the question of its philology — de etymo mire
se torquent viri docti — and as an additional quota of
confusion one of them has placed the significance of
slender upon the word exile as it is used in English. I
do not know of such an adjective in our language and
still less of one bearing this interpretation ; but this
apart it would seem that the slender stone connecting
with the conception of the Graal is even more discon-
certing than any philological difficulty. Further, the
word exilis suffers the meaning of leanness, and this in
connection with a stone of plenty which paints in the
Parsifal an eternal larder, a parte ante et a parte post,
is not less than hopeless. It may be said that Wolfram's
intention was to specify by Lapis exilis that his talisman
was least among stones in dimension yet great in its
efficacy, even as the Scriptures tell us that the rriustard
seed is least among grains and yet becomes a great tree.
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
There is a certain plausibility in this, and students of
another school will know that Lapis exilis is a term which
corresponds wholly to the great talisman of metallic
transmutation, for no adept experienced any difficulty
when he carried the powder of projection — which, as we
have seen, was in fact the Stone — in his wallet, or even
his girdle, yet this was also great in its efficacy, as there
is no need to insist. The explanation is shallow notwith-
standing, when we know that the true description of the
Graal Stone on the historical side, or rather the accurate
statement of fact, would be e ccelo veniens. But it is under-
stood of course that this does not enter the lists as a con-
struction of the chaotic readings found in the manuscripts.
Their only possible rendering to preserve the verbal
similarity with a reasonable consonance in the root-idea
of the subject is Lapis exilii = th.e Stone of Exile, or Lapis
exsulis = ihe Exile's Stone. The correspondence is here
twofold, for in the first place there is the exile of Lucifer,
who — if the jewel was once in his crown — lost it on ex-
pulsion from heaven, and in the second place there is
the exile of humanity, which is ex bypothesi a derivation
from the fall of the angels. It was given to men as a
palladium — perhaps even as a gage of their final exalta-
tion to the thrones vacated above. It so happens that
there are some curious lights of symbolism which illus-
trate a reading that I put forward under every reserve
and tentatively. No one will believe at first sight that
the Graal Stone and the Graal Chalice can have any
affinity between them, unless indeed the cup was hewn —
let us say — out of jasper or chalcedony. This notwith-
standing, we shall find the analogy rather in unlooked-for
places. Let us recur for a moment to the Lesser Holy
Graal and its comparison of the Mystic Vessel to the
Stone in which Christ was laid — an imputed analogy
which is put into the mouth of the Master when He
discourses to Joseph of Arimathaea, delineating the
purport and perfection of'the whole mystery. It seems
assuredly the most extraordinary analogy which it is
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
possible to institute, and I do not pretend that it assists
us to understand the substitution of a Stone for a Chalice
in Wolfram's version of the legend, which is devoid of
any connection between the Graal and the Passion of
Christ — almost as if the Repairer had returned to the
heights after the institution of the Eucharist and hence-
forward Himself — as Pontifex futurorum bonorum — sent
down the efficacious sacrament for the sustenance of his
chosen people. In the ordinary Eucharistic Rite one
would tolerate the comparison in respect of the Pyx,
though the elucidation of things which ex bypothesi are
alive by means of things which are dead is scarcely in the
order of enlightenment. One thing at least seems to
follow from all the texts, and this is that the sacramental
Chalice in the Graal Mass was rather the receptacle of
the Consecrated Bread than of the Consecrated Wine.
The Chalice, which corresponds to a Stone, and this Stone
the Rock in which Christ was laid, must symbolise the
Vessel of the Bread. In the Book of the Holy Graal and in
the Quest of Galahad, Hosts were taken from the Chalice ;
in the Parsifal, Bread in the first instance was taken from
the Talismanic Stone ; in Heinrich, that Reliquary
which was itself the Graal had a Host reposing therein ;
Chretien is vague enough, but his undeclared Warden in
prostration seems to have been nourished after the same
manner as Mordrains and Heinrich's ghostly Keeper.
The analogy of these things, by which we are helped
to their understanding at least up to a certain point,
is Scriptural, as we should expect it to be ; it connects
with that other Stone which followed the people of
Israel during forty years in the wilderness, and the
interpretation is given by St. Paul. " Our fathers . . .
did all eat the same spiritual meat ; and did all drink
the same spiritual drink : for they drank of that spiritual
Rock that followed them : and that Rock was Christ."
It will be inferred that the root-idea of the story is
based upon the natural fact that torrents or streams
flow occasionally through rocky ground, but the masters
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
in Israel knew of the deeper meaning, or divined it at
least in their subtlety, seeing that their whole concern
was with a spiritual pilgrimage. It is said in the Zoharic
tract entitled The Faithful Shepherd, that a Stone or
Rock is given, and yet another Stone is given,
the Name of which is the Name of Tetragram-
maton. Now, this is a reference to the Prophecy of
Daniel which says that the Stone which struck the
statue became like a mountain and filled the whole
earth. It is applied to Messias and his Kingdom by
the preface to the Zohar, which says further that the
Israelites, during their exile in Egypt, had lost the
Mystery of the Holy Name. When, however, Moses
appeared, he recalled this Name to their minds. It
follows herefrom that we are dealing with another legend
of the Lost Word, and of course if Christ was the Rock
or Stone which supplied sustenance to the Jews, we
can understand in a vague manner not only the corre-
spondence between the Graal and a Mystic Stone but
also the manner — otherwise of all so discounselling — in
which the cycle ascribes to its Great Palladium, whether
Stone or Cup, a marvellous power of nourishment.
The allusion is therefore to the Corner Stone, which
is Christ and which became the head of the building.
It is the old Talmudic and Kabalistic tradition that the
Lapis fundamentalis was set in the Temple of Jerusalem
under the Ark of the Covenant, even as the Rock of
Calvary, by another legend, is called the centre of the
world. All these stones in the final exhaustion of
symbolism are one Stone, which does not differ from
the white cubic stone which the elect receive in the
Apocalypse together with the New and Secret Name
written thereon. This stone in its symbolic form would
no doubt be the least possible in cubic measurement —
that is to say, in the correspondence between things
within and without, even as that which is given,
strangely inscribed within, to the recipient in one of
the most deeply symbolic of the Masonic High Grades.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Analogies are subtle and analogies are also precarious,
but those which I have traced here are at least more in
consonance with the spirit of the Graal literature than
(i) The Sacred Stone, called the Mother of the Gods,
which is mentioned by Ovid and of which Arnobius
tells us that it was small and could be carried easily by
a single man ; (2) the Roman Lapis manalis, which
brought rain in drought, as it might have brought food
in famine ; (3) the Bcetilus or Oracular Stone which
gave oracles to its bearer, speaking with a still small voice.
VIII
THE ANALOGIES OF MASONRT
§ A. THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BUILDING GUILD
The interpretation of doctrine is good, but the thing
which is essential is life, and thereafter those measures
of experience which are proper to the degree of life.
In like manner, there is the study of the symbolism
which is outside doctrine but gives evidence of its
inward sense ; herein, as I believe, there are the keys
of many sanctuaries, or at least of many gates leading
to the holy places ; but again it is a certain quality of
life — and this only — which sheds light upon symbolism,
or by which there is an entrance effected beyond the
threshold or artificial and corporate part of secret know-
ledge and much more therefore into the Holy of Holies.
It is in this sense that it is said in the old Scriptures :
" He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
As regards the keys and the secrets, it is necessary
also that we should distinguish between life and its
records. The latter remain as examples, 'as traces, as
evidences, and no one should presume to affirm that
they are not of high value. It is, however, after their
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Secret 'Tradition in Christian Times
own manner, and although the bodies of the dead may
be embalmed, though they may be laid under all con-
secrations in the places of rest, and though there is a
certain very true and very high manner in which we
should look for their glorious resurrection, they remain
dead bodies until the Word shall pass above them,
crying : " Let these bones live."
It is especially over the place and importance of
certain literatures which contain a hidden meaning, and
over certain unmanifested confraternities which com-
municate mysteries other than political in their com-
plexion, that the memorials of the past sometimes prove
to be as lavender laid among linen — fragrant, as it may
perhaps be, but dead as the past which has buried them.
So long, for example, as our great, authorised scholar-
ship— holding, though it does, all warrants of textual
research — has recourse only to pre-Christian Celtic
records for an explanation of the Graal and its literature,
so long it will have nothing to give us but the dry bones
of things antecedent in semi-savage folk-lore, and not
the essence which is alive. Again, while other experts
in research seek among the trade guilds of the Middle
Ages for the sources of that which is termed Masonry,
they will find nothing that will communicate to them
either life or the life of life. Of the latter it should be
added that scholarship is not in search, and at its sudden
manifestation the old students might be perplexed, and
that certainly. I am writing, however, for those who
in literature and in secret association would look in-
differently for some signs of that quest which they are
themselves pursuing — I mean, the Divine Quest. To
these I can say plainly that out of the mere things of
genealogy there is nothing that can rise again. It is
only under high light and guidance that the gift of
interpretation, acknowledging all antecedents which have
been demonstrated in the historical order, can relegate
them to their proper sphere, and can say at need to
others, as they have said Ipng since to themselves :
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
" Seek not the living among the dead ; this has risen ;
it is not here."
I have bracketed for the moment the external history
of the Holy Graal with that of Freemasonry, because
although the analogy between them is of one kind only
it is an analogy of great importance. As a time came
when the old Celtic folk-tales were taken over in a
Christian and indeed in a mystic interest, as it is only
subsequently to this acquisition that the literature of
the Holy Graal can be said properly to exist, so also
came that hour when the mystery — such as it was — of
the old building guild was assumed by another mystery,
as a consequence of which it was re-expressed with a
different intention, and it is thus, and so only, that, as
a shadow of things beyond it, there came into being
the association which we understand as symbolical
Masonry. So far as we can regard it under the aspect
of a succeeding or co-incident witness, the epoch of
Kabalism was prolonged by the scholiasts of the Zohar,
until that period when the next witness was beginning
to emerge. After this manner I return to my initial
statement that the gift of interpretation is good, but
that which is essential is life. It is only the spirit of
life which can account, in whatever form it was mani-
fested, for the assumption either of the romance-
literature or the particular craft. Without it we have
indeed interpretations, as we have also hypotheses of
origin, but they are devoid of true roots. As a species
of extra-illustration in the first case, there have been
various hypotheses put forward which are neither
countenanced by the records of the past nor charac-
terised by a gift of understanding ; while in the second
case we have had simply the romance of archaeology or
that alternative gift which fills gaps in history by
arbitrary suppositions masqued thinly in the guise of
fact. Official authorities may be sometimes short of
sight, as they are, outside their horizon, but these un-
accredited intermediaries have brought their subjects
578
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
into something approaching disdain, though a sense of
justice inclines me to add that creators of wild hypothesis,
with all their distracted material, sometimes make shots
in the dark which come nearer to the true goal than
the more sober skill which aims only in one direction,
but at what happens to be a false object.
The historical side of Masonry has at this day its
expositors and students who are characterised by the
same patient and untiring spirit which supports other
branches of research. They have done valuable work in
the past and again will do so in the future, but at
present all zeal is held in suspension by the exhaustion
of materials — I speak here of the things which are or
would be of living and high importance, not of those
which are subsidiary or accidental. These too serve
their purpose, but they have little or no office in the
larger issues ; they keep green the spirit of inquiry,
which takes into its field the things that signify little
and so keeps its hands on the plough. It is better for
that spirit to investigate at need the memorials of local
lodges than to perish of enforced inanition. It is excus-
able also, and in a sense it is even good, to exaggerate in
one's mind the importance of such tasks, to make much
of the little till the great comes in our way, and then
to make more of that. But some things — and these
vital — which exceed the sphere understood as that of
research, pass out of sight in this manner, because,
excepting for very gifted, very keen — may I say ? — illumi-
nated minds, a dry stick in the hand, though it has no
probability of blooming like Aaron's rod, is for some
practical purposes more convenient than a live sapling
at the top of an inaccessible hill. This is rather the
position of those things out of sight which I have at
the moment mentioned ; the lesser memorials and
their aspects tend to keep them where they are — in
remote and unnoticed distances. It is not my design to
impeach the historical sense — to which all exaltations
and crowns ! — but there is a dual difficulty in the path of
579
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the perfect term, for the heart of imagination — and those
orders — is inhibited by this sense, while imagination, in
the excess of its enthusiasm, takes the heart out of history
and sets in its place I know not what spirit of fantasy.
Between these gulfs on either side of the prudent way,
to be an historian is hard.
For myself — if I may be permitted to say so — I present
the first consideration of the Holy Graal from a mystic
standpoint, which, so far as I am aware, is founded on the
requisite knowledge of every existing text. It is such
knowledge or its result that enables me to take the via
'prudentice which I have mentioned, and to find that,
accepting most statements made by official scholarship
with any show of evidence, all the important points
remain in my hands unaffected. In exactly the same way
we can afford — and that gladly — to let the Masonic
authorities prosecute their search for still earlier records
of the building guilds, while in the absence of fresh
materials we can sympathise with their sorrow and
aspiration. If things much more archaic than have been
so far found should in fine reward their vigilance, it will
be all honour to their industry, but it will be also small
concern of ours. Let us make a ceremonial obeisance
before anything of this kind which may yet transpire,
as we do — and also gladly — before the records of Mary's
Chapel. I know beforehand the best that can be said
about those which are possibly to come, as I know of
those which are among us. They will be, as these
others are, excellent and valuable within their own
degree, but they will not signify beyond it, and they
will not serve any purpose which I can claim to cherish
in common with those to whom my appeal is made
herein. The Elohim may have formed Adam of the
dust of the earth, but it is useless to question that dust
concerning man who was created male and female, as
the sign of life and its perpetuity. It is useless equally
to question the old craft guild concerning symbolical
Masonry, since it was not by a natural development
580
Secret Tradition In Christian Times
that the one was transformed into the other ; the seeds
of the transformation were brought from very far away,
or, to express it more correctly, the craft, as we have it,
is not an example of growth after the ordinary kind but
of an exceedingly curious grafting. The ground of con-
tention is not that things of handicraft could never have
developed by possibility into allegory and symbolism,
but that they could not, as the result of that process,
have produced the synthesis and summary of all past
initiation which we find in the symbolical degrees. Now,
it is at the point of grafting, or taking over, and this
because of the results which I have just specified, that
we, as transcendentalists or mystics, become concerned —
and then only — in Masonry.
For the better illustration of my purpose let me now
make a short distinction concerning three classes :
(1) There are those who have a love for the minima of
instituted mystery ; who, if they are carefully sifted,
would be found to attach some importance to the posses-
sion in common with B and C of certain titles, signs
and passwords which are unknown to X and Y ;
(2) there are those who believe, and this in all honesty,
that morality is enhanced when expressed, let us say,
in parables ; when materialised by analogical represen-
tation ; when decorated by a ceremonial pageant ;
(3) there are, in fine, those who are looking for the real
things, among whom we ask to be inscribed — at least
as the lovers of truth, if we cannot with the same
boldness demand to be classed among those who love
God. This lesser — or is it an equivalent ? — nomen-
clature we require on the faith that our certain criteria
enable us at least to know in what directions, and under
what circumstances, it is useless to go in search of real
things.
It will be agreed that the first class does not call for
our serious attention ; they are children, with full
licence to take all joy in their play. The second class
is entitled to a measure jf our respect, for they are at
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
least on the side of the natural goodness, andfthey re-
cognise in their own mode that it is not exactly in a
position to stand alone. At the same time they mis-
take a means for an end, and they do not know where
to turn for the only efficacious consecrations ; so that
these also signify only in the lesser degree. I have
indicated already that it is to the third class that all
my thesis is addressed ; its members are in a position to
appreciate the historical aspects at their proper value,
giving to this natural Caesar all that belongs to Caesar,
yet confessing to some great reservations, which are not
less than the things that concern God.
Speaking therefore in the interests of this class, and in
terms which they will understand, there is a sharp
alternative as follows : Masonry is either consanguineous
by the root-meaning of its symbols and legends with
schools of real experience ; either it shows forth the
one thing about which we have been in labour from
the beginning, or it returns in the last resource into the
category of the Worshipful Company of Vintners, of
Cardmakers, of Fishmongers, and so forth. These are
admirable institutions, and to be free of them, which
is not easy, is no less than a civic distinction. So also
are the friendly societies, in their way, excellent, in-
cluding that Order of Buffaloes which, perhaps because
it is late in its series, is termed antediluvian ; but if we
are incorporated by these it is for much the same reason
that we may be members of a Ratepayers' Association,
namely, for benefit and protection in common. These
are good reasons, but it is not on account of eternal
life that they move us in a given direction.
Eternal Life — initiates, companions and brethren of
all the sodalities ! — I know well that from the mere
reference there will follow the irresistible question :
What is there in Masonry, or in any of the allied Orders,
which can justify us in suggesting that they might or
could be taken up in conjunction with a quest after
eternal life ? Now, the most pertinent questions are those
582
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
which have replied to themselves already in the mind of
the speaker, and, in this case, the persons who would
ask might answer : Masonry is obviously the remanent
of a trade guild, which once had its trade secrets and
covenanted those whom it received to divulge nothing
in respect of its mystery to any who were outside the
particular craft of building. They would not conclude
at this point, but we may intervene for a moment with
an observation on our own part. Assume that, so far
as it has proceeded, this is a correct answer, and what
then follows ? It is not now a building guild ; it has
no longer any trade secrets ; there is perhaps no class
of society which would be more utterly discounselled
by the suggestion that it should design edifices, or
should even dig foundations and lay bricks. To this
extent therefore, as the inheritors of a building guild,
the Order is apparently stultified. It has as little part
in its antecedents and precursors as had the Christ of
the fourth gospel in the coming Prince of this world.
The proper answer of symbolical Freemasonry as to
the operative art might well be : In me it hath not
anything.
Those even who are acquainted merely with the
rituals of craft Masonry — and they may be numerous
enough outside the ranks of the brotherhood — will here
intervene and say, in continuation of that answer which
I have so far given in part : That is true, or at least in a
certain sense ; but the old craft guild became symbolised,
and its instruments, and ritual procedure, were taken
over — since you emphasise the term — by the genius of
allegory, so that things which were originally physical
were exalted into the moral order, and thus they remain
till to-day, as the rites, teachings and documents prove
indubitably. This is estimable and convincing in its
way ; it so happens, however, that an appeal of the
kind is going to prove too much ; and yet it is by
such a clear issue that we shall reach one term of our
subject.
583
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
§ B. MASONRY AND MORAL SCIENCE
I must put my first point somewhat roughly and
crudely, with an apology for the frankness which it
involves ; decoration is here impossible, and on account
of so much that will yet remain to say after, I believe
that I shall be exonerated in the end. The ethical
position is then, so far as Masonry is concerned, a sincere
attempt — and this simply — to effect a sanctification of
things which of necessity and essentially are obvious in
moral teachings. No one challenges these teachings,
and in the world about us no one cares anything. It
cannot be less than regrettable if any person should join
either one or another confraternity with the idea of
improving his ethical position, not because the design
is anything except highly laudable, but because his
most proper incentives are in himself and his daily life.
No association has anything to tell him which he does
not know already, and this from his earliest childhood.
If I may speak my whole mind, after having followed many
highways and byways, I should say that his best and
only necessary guides are the official religions, the gate
of which is morality, as I have striven to make plain
elsewhere. It is they that provide the spirit and reason
which — unless he is called to go further, and that
journey will be further within them — should actuate his
conduct, just as the laws of his country take charge of
the letter thereof, and see that it shall be constructed
after their manner and not according to his own.
From this view it is impossible to derogate, and it is
difficult, in respect of it, to qualify ; but there is one
matter over which misconception may be avoided.
Let it be understood therefore that I do not take
exception to the ethical value of Masonic or the other
laws — in those matters which belong to the conduct of
life — because it is so obviously identical with the written
or unwritten law of all civilised conscience ; but I
584
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
affirm that a knowledge which is possessed indepen-
dently by all, which is mainly derived from unassisted
lights of Nature, which no one disputes seriously, which
is withal so simple that there is no difficulty in teaching
it directly, which in fine has been taught us in our
catechisms, even at the knees of our mothers — I affirm
that this knowledge does not require an allegorical and
ceremonial system of considerable complexity to explain
or enforce it. There is above all no evident warrant
for secrecy and mystery in the plain basis of individual
and social morality. It must be added that, on the
evidence of their own history, the associations included
by my category have not succeeded in developing a
more perfect moral man than has any other system of
ethical discipline which is now at work in the world.
They do not therefore possess a more powerful instru-
ment than are other instruments with which we may
be acquainted independently. When it is said that a
Mason, for example, who abides scrupulously by the
rule of his Order, cannot fail to be a good man, such a
statement may be accepted without reserve ; but since
the laws of Masonry are simply the expression of an
universal ethical standard, as much may be declared of
any person, initiated or not initiated, who elects to
guide his life by the recognised code of morality and
goodwill, more especially as the element of esprit de
corps scarcely enters into questions of this nature.
A certain severity will be read into these strictures,
more especially as the majority of Masons have never
supposed that their association could offer a higher
light than that of good conduct in exaltation, and I
ought therefore to add that if this were really the limit
of its horizon, so far as they are concerned, the craft
as such is — in one sense — amply justified. That which is
desirable for them, that which for them is the term and
aim of goodness may not only be their strong incentive
but a necessity in the lesser degree. Moreover, on broader
grounds it is no matter of pretence, for it has never,
585
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
except in some spurious high grades, which are its burden
and not its possession, offered more than it can give. It
is not, therefore, as it was described by De Quincey, the
great imposture of the modern world ; and if it be
an error of enthusiasm to put forward an ideal of natural
goodness in the guise of a mystery of knowledge, one
can only wish that the effect had been to make that
ideal an actuality over the whole world.
All this notwithstanding, its success or failure along
these lines could be scarcely a special concern of ours,
who know of ways as excellent after its own kind and
of better ways beyond them. I return therefore to my
previous proposition — that Masonry can interest us so
far only as it enshrines something more than an ethical
doctrine and instruction. This other thing is not,
however, by way of addit amentum, but by way of essence.
The recognition of such an essence will enable us to
understand more clearly some of the lesser processes, or
at least to tolerate them more patiently, as first stages
in a history of development which have also the heights
as their term. I may alienate the sympathies of some
of my readers, seeing that there are so many listeners,
but the explanation of this last point lies to my mind
in the fact that the raison d'etre of all natural goodness
must be sought in the law of grace. So also it remains
that the churches are still the accredited guides because
grace has its channels therein, or so at least till we trans-
mute the official beliefs into direct experience and
thus enter not into that which is apart from them,
but that which is their wider consciousness. In the
meantime, all that is innocent, all that is blameless, all
that is of fair repute makes in fine for goodness ; and
if that goodness is natural in the first degree, it has
also a mode of dissolution into the goodness which
transcends Nature. If therefore the laws of brotherly
love are maintained and promoted in a lodge of Masons,
as they certainly are, it is all honour to Masonry, and
so much towards the reign of peace on earth. But it is
586
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
not less true that it is easy, and very easy, to reach
those limits beyond which it has scarcely entered into
the heart of Masonry to conceive — by which I mean
as it is so far understood in the lodges ; as it is to be
judged by its literature ; and as, outside all personal
initiation, we may know it in the life of its members.
It is at this point that some who are on higher quests
than those of conduct must part with it, leaving their
benedictions behind them ; or that they must find
therein, after all the horizon of ethics has been at last
traversed, some region beyond the ordinary ken which
may prove the land of their desire. Beyond the seven
bands which comprise the spectrum of the corporal
works of mercy, there are other rays of light, and in
Masonry also there are rays beyond the violet. We
may glean something concerning them from its history,
but we must seek above all in its symbolism and in the
proper meaning of its legends. To conclude as to this
part, Masonry either belongs to the secret tradition or
it is for us made void.
§ C. A THEORY OF HERMETIC INTERFERENCE
Having given an example of the manner in which
symbolical Masonry explains, as if almost on its own
part, how the old craft guild was taken over and trans-
formed, and — although it is by no means suggested that
Mary's Chapel and Canongate Kilwinning should burn
their earliest records — having seen that the surface
explanation is characterised by great insufficiency, I
will now show another side of the same subject, prior
to which it is assumed that even if craft Masonry may
be subject to certain errors of enthusiasm, it has
always good faith on its side. On the other hand,
outside its records and their inferences, and shipped
upon the great sea of speculation, I have seldom met
with any subject which has produced more explicit
falsehood in the manufacture of historical materials
58?
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
than has the question of the origins of Masonry. There
is no need to specify the mendacious legends of some
of the high degrees, for they carry their proper seals
and marks upon their mere surface. Let us rather take
for our illustration one great name in the literature of
the craft, for I suppose that there is none more respected
in its own country than is that of J. M. Ragon among
the Masons of France. I believe that, on questions of
historical fact, his authority has been regarded as almost
final. He appears indeed as a sober and careful recorder,
though it is obvious that he had several strong pre-
judgments interleaving his notes of researches, and these
would, in any case, make his impartiality doubtful. It
must, however, be said that between his materials,
some of which must have come to him already tinkered,
and his peculiar construction of facts, it is almost pure
incautiousness to take anything that he says unverified.
He is at the same time the one writer in modern times —
that is to say, in and about the year 1853 — who has
spoken with the most unhesitating voice on the origin
of symbolical Masonry outside any natural development
of the old craft mystery. In order that I may do no
unconscious injustice, I will put his thesis as nearly as
possible in his own words.
" Philosophical Masonry," he says, " which neither in
fact nor in name had any existence previously, was con-
ceived and embodied in three rituals, in the year 1646,
by Elias Ashmole, who rediscovered antique initia-
tion, as Mesmer rediscovered magnetism " (Orthodoxie
Maconnique, p. 5). " It is from this primitive source
that the Masonic world has drawn that light which
illuminates its labours " (ib.). In the same year, being
that which saw the reception of Ashmole into the old
building guild, a society of Rosicrucians, formed on the
plan of Bacon's New Atlantis, assembled at Freemason's
Hall, London. Ashmole and the other brethren of the
Rose-Cross, seeing that speculative Masons already ex-
ceeded the diminishing remnant of operative members,
588
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
concluded that the time had come to abrogate the old
form of reception and to substitute a written method
of initiation, based upon the Ancient Mysteries, and
especially those of Egypt and Greece. " The first
grade was composed, substantially as we now have it "
(p. 29). It received the approbation of the initiates,
and the grade of Fellow-Craft was devised in 1648,
being followed by the Grade of Master a short time
subsequently. The specific object of Ashmole was to
regenerate, under the veil of architecture, the mysteries
of ancient Indian and Egyptian initiation and to provide
the new association with a bond of union, fraternity,
perfection, equality and science, grounded upon the
laws of Nature and the love of humanity (ib., p. 99).
The learned alchemist codified all the oral traditions ;
they assumed a form and body ; and this was the true
and proper beginning of Freemasonry, as we now have
it (ib., p. 292).
It will be seen that I have not overestimated the
force and finality of these statements ; it would appear
almost incredible that they could be a pure invention of
Ragon, or a mere fable which he took over from some
earlier source that cannot now be identified ; yet this
is the case actually, and outside the bare fact that
Ashmole was received into the old craft guild, as he
records in a few cold and detached lines of his private
diary, there is no particle of evidence to support it.
That it were otherwise I could well desire, for I have
said that the craft was acquired, and that which took it
over knew well enough the purport of the Ancient
Mysteries, or, under all its veils and subterfuges, we
could never have had the legend of the Chief Degree,
nor the equally memorable closing which is attached
thereto. But the bodies of tradition, which may coin-
cide, and that closely — which may reflect on one another
— which may independently testify to each other — are
not derived from one another, and the Alchemists, as
such, did not invent Masonry. I do not propose to go
589
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
over the ground which I have traversed in some previous
writings and in particular to recite the conclusions of my
Studies in Mysticism as to spiritual rebirth in connection
with Masonic Doctrine and Symbolism. That herein
lies the true understanding of the Craft Degrees, I am
entirely certain, and it is to this point that the grades
lead up from the beginning. That the mysteries which
we call ancient — though I think that in some form they
are always in the world — were concerned with no other
subject, I am not less certain. Outside all offices of
Masonry there are derivations of the Rosy Cross which,
although at a great distance, testify concerning the same
doctrine and the same high experience ; the old records
of the brotherhood also testify ; and as there is at least
one school of alchemical literature which has inwritten
the secret life of the soul under the veil of metallic
transmutation, there would be no cause for surprise if
we could trace the interference of one or other of the
Hermetic fraternities in the transformation of the build-
ing guild into symbolical Freemasonry. But the evidence
of fact is wanting, either by the way of record or other-
wise ; while as regards the change in itself, this is much
too general in its character to show the hand of an
individual school. We must be content therefore with
the voice of the grades themselves, with the legends and
the symbolism which they involve.
§ D. ONE KEY TO THE SANCTUARY
It should be understood that I am speaking at the
present moment only of the craft degrees. I have every
reason to know that the high grades do not deserve the
unqualified condemnation with which they have been
set aside by writers like Ragon and by certain expositors
of the German school of Masonic thought. Several of
them are great rites which embody important mystic
teaching, and without some of them I regard the craft
degrees as offering, mystically speaking, an unfinished
590
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
experience. Those, however, who are familiar with the
craft rituals — about which I do not intend to speak
otherwise than by assuming such knowledge — will be
in a position to realise how far they can be said to
embody an ethical doctrine, except as side-issues of their
mystery. There is, of course, a very plain inculcation
of certain obvious virtues, but it is all so slight, and it is
all so obvious, that to speak of it as an ethical system
seems to magnify the subject out of all due proportion.
On the other hand, we do find certain provinces of
knowledge recommended to the study of the candidate
at one stage of his advancement. We find also certain
illustrations of a great mystery of building, certain
references to a secret which has been lost, and a great
legend concerning the destruction of a master of know-
ledge who took away with him that secret, and except
under very deep veils, outside all craft Masonry, it has
not been since recovered. As I have quoted Ragon in
a connection which was necessarily unfavourable, let
me now cite him in a different sense. He has said that
when we find in Masonry and in some other secret ways
of the past a reference to building — whether of temples,
palaces, or towns — what is intended is that there was
a manifestation of doctrine ; in other words, there was
an ordered communication of mysteries. As to the
great majority of instances, I believe in this as little as
I believe that Troy town was a solar mythos ; but in
respect of craft Masonry it is the one note of illumina-
tion in Ragon's great wild of speculation and discursion
on the degrees, high and otherwise, of the fraternity.
We may be quite certain that those who transformed
the building guild did not intend to put forward an
historical thesis. The change which took place pre-
supposes such a spiritualisation of the traditional temple
that it passes into the world of symbolism, becoming
itself a House of Doctrine. If, apart from the question
of mystical death and rebirth, which I have set aside
from consideration in this paper, we are to look any-
591
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
where for another clue, it is in the amazing inference
which follows from the craft legend concerning the
stultification of the House of Doctrine before its erection
was finished. Those who are familiar with the rituals
will understand exactly what I mean, and I give this
as the key by which any one who is properly qualified,
and who chooses, may really open one of the secret
sanctuaries. We know that the Master was asked one
little question, and that for one little answer which he
declined to make the traditional founder of doctrine
came to an end of violence ; the mysteries which he
reserved perished in his person, and although it has
never been noticed so far by any Masonic writer in the
living world, it follows therefrom that the Great Symboli-
cal Temple was not finished according to the original
plans. It is for this reason that symbolically, if not
actually, the True Temple still remains to be erected.
Meanwhile, in Masonry, as in other institutions, we rest
content as we can with certain conventional proxies in
which we suppose, by a precarious hypothesis, which has,
however, a profound meaning imbedded, that some
analogy inheres. It is understood that two kings who
represented at one time the royal houses of official Grace
and Nature knew the canonical answer to the question,
supposing that this had been put under the due warrants,
but it is to be inferred that it was the verbal formula
and not the ground-plan of the mystic building. In
any case it remained Sacramentum Regis, the Secret of
the King, and it follows, still speaking symbolically, that
all Masonry derives not from a lodge of Masters but from
that of an inferior grade. The missing formula was a
word of life, and the locum tenens, by a contradistinctive
analogy, is a word of death. It is for this reason that
the whole corporate fraternity undertakes a Quest which
is in rigid correspondence with that of the Round Table,
but they move in the opposite direction to that in which
the Mysteries repose. It is the most mystical of all
inquests, for it is the history of our human life. But
592
Secret Tradition in Christian Times
there is an Orient from on high which in fine rises on
the soul ; the soul turns in that light and moves thence-
forward in the true and one direction.
It is possible to express what follows from these facts
in terms of comparative simplicity, for even as Moses
came down from the mountain of God with a veil upon
the face of him, so have I been speaking thus far to the
mixed assembly of my readers under the veil of a careful
reservation, because these things are not to be discussed
in public without changing the voice. Let me say now
more openly, since this is permitted, that the ideal of
the True Temple is in our hearts, and it is there that
we rebuild it. We do this daily by all the aspirations
of our nature, but for want of the lost designs we have
not been able to externalise it. No doubt we have not
led the life which entitles us to know of the doctrine ;
we feel that it is implied and latent in all the roots of
our being ; and we seem to die with it on our lips. It
speaks in our dreams but it uses an unknown language,
and if heart utters it to heart, it is only in oracles. But
we have conceived enough regarding it to be aware that
the Spiritual Temple is a House not made with hands.
And so neither Masonry nor any other one of the great
instituted Mysteries has designed a rebuilding of material
holy places. The rites of initiation may deal — as they
do certainly — in parables and in allegories ; they may
present — and they do also — their particular forms of
thought in the guise of a legend of yesterday, but they
are really the legends of to-morrow, the expressed heart
of expectation and not a retrospective review. But if
this be the case — as it is indeed beyond challenge — what
part have we otherwise in Masonry, seeing that we have
come out of Jewry as others came out of Egypt ? If
this, I say, be the case, what manner of House was that
which was planned of old in wisdom and was afterwards
finished as it best could be, because treason fell upon
the keeper, because, in the absence of preparation and
title, there had been an attempt to take the Kingdom of
593 2 P
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Heaven by violence ? Let us seek our first illustrative
answer from an episode of the Law which was once
promulgated in Israel. Moses the prophet came down
in his glory from Mount Sinai bringing with him the
Tables of the Law, but he found his rebellious people
unqualified for the high knowledge, and before the face
of them he broke those tables. Afterwards he gave
them indeed certain commandments, but I do not doubt
that they were the shadows of the others only — the code
of unruly children, not of the elected truly. The world
was not worthy. And the second example is that which
we know already — that the Graal was taken away, that
something was missing thereafter from the House of
Quest, that again the world was not worthy. The
three stories are therefore one story, and the same thing
is everywhere. It is so much everywhere that the
knowledge which remained with Moses was not with-
drawn utterly by him — according to the tradition of
Israel — when he went up the mountain in fine, when no
man living followed him, when he did not return ever
more. It has been held always in Jewry that there
were certain elders who received the secret deposit
and transmitted it in their turn in secret, so that it was
perpetuated from generation to generation till it became
known to the world at large, but only in an imperfect
form, about the middle period of the Christian centuries.
The original Zobar is reported by a paradox to have
been a sufficient load for twelve camels, and the extant
Zobar is on its own showing a substitute. The corre-
spondence in Graal literature is the disparting of the
Hallows among certain holy hermits and the removal of
the Sacred Vessel to that place of which Perceval should
know surely and with all speed.
That which was made void, according to the great
craft legend, was a non-Christian House of Doctrine.
The step beyond this is to show that there is a parallel
in Masonry concerning Christian doctrine, but it is
found in high degrees and in those which are militantly
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
Christian. If I were asked to speak frankly, I should call
it a concealed legend of Templar vengeance. It is an
old story in the high grades that the murder of Jacques
de Molai was destined to be avenged heavily, and one
section of criticism has concluded that this was effected
ultimately by the decapitation of Louis XVI. ; but this
is romance of Faerie. Whether the supposed vengeance
came otherwise to anything I am not prepared to say,
but I can show that the secret plan was more deeply
laid, though it may have been actuated by far different
motives than inhere usually in the idea of vengeance.
The plan is not illustrated by any legend of murder
or by anything that, remotely or approximately, can
suggest a vendetta ; but in one Masonic grade which,
by the hypothesis, is the last transformation of the
Templars, the fact is shown forth by the silent eloquence
of symbolism. As in the craft degrees we learn how the
vital secret was taken away, so here the rite sets before
us a picture of all Christendom, personified by the flower
of its chivalry, standing guard, amidst the adjuncts of
pomp and ceremony, over a vacant sepulchre — the shrine
from which a God has departed. Could anything
signify more profoundly the bereavement and widow-
hood of the Christian House of Doctrine ? Could
anything indicate more pregnantly the presence of a
sub-surface design among the old Knights Templars,
supposing that this grade were really, at some far dis-
tance, descended therefrom ? Would it not seem like a
challenge by the way of evasion, saying to the modern
world : " Do you suppose, in your fondness, that about
those hallows of the past our intention was ever
centralised except to conceal it ? "
Our next step takes us to a grade which is, com-
paratively speaking, obscure, though it is still worked in
England. It is one the position and claim of which is
a little difficult to determine, whether as to origin or
history. On the surface its similarity to the eighteenth
degree of Rose Croix has caused many persons to
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
repudiate it as a mere copy. The better view is, how-
ever, to infer that both rites originated from a common
prototype, and I may mention here that there are not
only several variants of the eighteenth degree incor-
porated by other systems, but there have also been
Rosicrucian degrees current from time to time in Masonry
which have very slight correspondence with the grade
supereminent of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite. This question apart, the particular chivalrous
and Masonic Order is rendered important to our present
purpose because it gives the symbolical counterpart by
alternative of that intimation which is conveyed in the
analogous grade. The latter represents a particular
state of the assumed case at the period of the Crusades,
the former at an epoch which — on account of several
historical confusions, having an appearance of design
— is scarcely possible to determine. In any event it
dissolves at a certain stage into yet another degree, and
between the successive points of the two rituals the
candidate is brought to a period when all earthly Houses
of Doctrine have given place to the high spiritual
House of Eternal Wisdom. As a preliminary to this,
the externalised House of Doctrine, represented by the
Holy Sepulchre, is made subject to a simple visitation,
with the result that it is found empty, and those who
look therein are told in a veiled manner that in such
a place it is useless to go in quest of lost secrets, because
the Divine Warden thereof has risen and gone away.
As the candidate — and this of necessity — is left always
in the position of Satan after his lectures at Salamanca,
that is to say, with the shadow instead of the substance,
so here the chivalry of the sepulchre has to be content
with what it has — with the rumour of the resurrection
constructed into glad tidings, though it remains that
the place of the Hallows is now an empty place.
Our last step takes us again to the literature of the
Holy Graal, which depicts a House of Doctrine, like the
temples, towns and palaces of which we have been
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
speaking previously. It shows how that House was in
the first place visited by sin and sorrow ; how secondly
it was made void, the secret things thereto belonging
being transferred therefrom. Symbolism has some-
times the way of sparing nothing, and probably the
makers of the legend intended only — as some expressly
say — to show how the realm of Logres had become
unworthy of the most holy things ; but the House of
the Doctrine is involved in the common ruin.
The question which now supervenes is one which
will occur spontaneously to all those who have followed
this account. Is it intended to suggest — shall I say ? —
that the secret of Masonry is anti-Jewish and anti-
Christian, or, to put it better, that the interests which
took over the building guild had either never entered
into those holy places of the past or had come forth
therefrom ? The answer is a decisive negative. It
follows from all the legends, all the symbolism, or that
part at least which is other than accidental, and in fine
from all the rituals of Masonry, that those who set
forth the widowhood of the House of Doctrine spoke
not from without it but from within ; that they looked
for the return of that which, for the time, had been
taken away ; that when they speak to us of what was
lost to Jewry, they were never more assured of the
wisdom which once dwelt in Israel ; that when they
mourn over the Holy Sepulchre, they were never more
certain that what has been removed is alive ; and as all
the degrees end in a substituted restoration it is also
certain that thither where the truth and beauty had been
taken they looked also to go. In other words, it is
the intimation of the secret schools that somewhere in
time and the world there is that which can confer upon
the candidate a real as well as a symbolical experience.
And this is the identical message of the Graal literature ;
it speaks too from within the official House of Christian
Doctrine concerning that which once inhered therein
and is now in the state of withdrawal or profound
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
latency ; but it offers all honour and devotion to the
substituted sanctuary which remains, as Masonry offers
it in the higher understanding both to Jew and Christian.
Here therefore is no enemy setting to at the work of
destruction, but here rather are the rumours and voices
as if of Unknown Superiors, like a power — which makes
for righteousness — between the seat of Peter and the seat
of the chief Patriarch, as if something were guiding and
consoling all the keepers of the keys, but dissuading them
at the same time from the opening of certain doors till
that which has been lost is at length restored to the
sanctuaries. It is in this sense only that we shall ever
get to understand the inner Mystery of the Holy Graal,
the Mystery of the Craft Degrees, and of the great,
disordered cohort of things from near and far — reflec-
tions, rumours, replicae and morganatic descents from
older Mysteries — which make up the cloud of witnesses
in the high degrees. The work, not indeed of the same
hands but of many at the same work, is therefore
everywhere, the traces of the same high intention, the
evidence — not less strong because it is not declared
openly — of masters, who are also our brothers, watching
haply over the quests of humanity and shaping them,
at proper seasons, to the true ends.
I conclude therefore (i) that Masonry is herein re-
ferred to its true place and is saved otherwise from the
category of vain observances that are consecrated by
good intention, because it leads us back, after many
travellings, to the one subject ; (2) that it is an index-
finger pointing to other rites, to pure and exalted cere-
monies, which — somewhat shadowy, somewhat dubious,
yet distinguishable as to their purpose — remain among
the records of the past, not without suggestions that,
even at this day, the Mysteries have not died utterly.
I have made it plain already that in so far as there
is mystic purpose or hidden doctrine in the Graal litera-
ture it is at most an echo from afar — a rumour, a legend
which had fallen into the hands of romancers. It is as
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
if Sir Walter Montbeliard, the patron of Robert de
Borron, being by the hypothesis a Templar, had told a
strange story to the poet of things which he also had
heard from afar concerning the Sons of the Valley ; it
is as if Guiot de Provence, having seen a transcript from
Toledo, had compared it with some Templar records
belonging to the house of Anjou. These are not the
directions of research, but they stand for more likely
ways, and I put forward as so many materials of assist-
ance, so many traces of the same implicits perpetuated
through several centuries — (a) the Sacramental Mystery
of Alchemy as corresponding to the Eucharistic Mystery
of the Holy Graal ; (b) the mystical pageant of Kabalism
as analogical to the Graal pageant ; (c) certain quests in
Masonry as synonymous with the Graal Quest. The con-
clusion is that from the middle of the twelfth century,
and so forward, there has been always a witness in the
world that the greatest and the highest among the holy
things have been represented by a certain substitution
within the official churches. The churches have not
been made void ; they are still " those holy fields " ;
but they bear the same relation to the sacred mystery
behind them that Sinai and Horeb, Tabor and Carmel,
Gethsemane and Calvary, bear to the official churches.
Remember that the highest office in no sense makes
void the second best among any offices that are inferior.
The Supernatural Graal is without prejudice to the
instituted sacrament, even as the transliterations and
complexities of Kabalistic interpretation reduce nothing
in the literal word.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
IX
THE HALLOWS OF THE GRAAL MTSTERT RE-
DISCOVERED IN THE TALISMANS OF THE
TAROT
To restate the fact that the canonical Hallows of the
Graal legend are the Cup, the Lance, the Sword and the
Dish will seem almost impertinent at this stage ; the
least versed of my readers will regard it as a weary re-
iteration, for he and they all are in plenary possession of
whatever need be said upon the subject. I must specify
the bare fact, this notwithstanding, because of what
follows hereafter. And it may seem to arise from the
repetition if, further, I recall to their minds — and my
own memory — one experience which comes to us all, and
startles us when it does come, revealing the fund of
unobservance to which we must confess by necessity.
When any of us have been studying exhaustively — as we
think — a given subject and are surfeited in our familiarity
therewith, it may happen that we alight unawares on
something which had escaped us utterly. It may be
through the random remark of a stranger, through an
apparently detached sentence in a forgotten or unknown
book, but the well of other waters is opened and we see
the whole thing under a new aspect. On the surface this
illustrates the difficulty with which we notice anything
that is ever so little outside our special groove ; but
there are times when it seems to have a deeper root,
and we realise in our hearts that anything may serve as
a pretext to open another horizon — " a flower, a leaf,
the ocean " may touch and kindle " the electric chain
wherewith we are darkly bound." So falls the " spark
from heaven." Now, as an example to the purpose in
hand, I wonder how many critical works have been
written on the Holy Graal, and yet it has occurred to
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
no one that its Hallows, under a slight modification, may
be somewhere else in the world than in those old books
of romance, I might have shown that their bases are in
modern high grades of Masonry, but I can understand how
this has been missed, and my default means that I have
not attached undue importance to the fact. But they are
to be found also in the most unexpected of all places,
outside the grades of literature, and they have existed
there from what would be termed masonically time
immemorial. They are in the antecedents of our playing-
cards — that is to say, in the old Talismans of the Tarot.
These are things which, in a sense, are almost of world-
wide knowledge, which have interested innumerable
people, which still constitute, as they have constituted
for generations and centuries, the most prolific form of
divination and the vagrant art of fortune-telling. We
know nothing concerning their origin and of their dis-
tribution little enough. I trust that I am least disposed
of any one to assume the antiquity of doubtful documents
or to predate traditions on the basis of their uncertain
origin. I leave to those whom it may concern the
history of playing-cards and their precedents, this so-called
Book of fbotb, nor do I need to recite, even shortly,
what has been assumed regarding it, because one class
of scholarship which has dealt more particularly with
the question of historical antiquity in these matters is
that precisely which lies under most suspicion on the
ground of its enthusiasm. In particular the measures
on the side of speculation are pressed down and running
over with every kind of folly and extravagance. The
uttermost of all hazards is expressed in the language of
certitude, even as J. M. Ragon expressed the hazard
of a root-connection between Elias Ashmole and the
institution of speculative Masonry. There is another
order of learning which has confined itself to the simple
archaeology of the subject with sober and valuable
results ; by such people I shall be challenged scarcely
if I say that there are traces of the Tarot cards in the
60 1
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
fourteenth century, prior to which they are not of
necessity non-existent because, like the Graal itself, they
are lost to sight.
Archaeology is, however, its own term, so that usually
there is nothing beyond it ; and therefore, having so far
distinguished between two schools, I must say that
there is yet another side which might rivet attention
generally if it were possible to speak fully concerning it.
I record in the first place (a) that the correspondence of
certain Tarot symbols with those of the Holy Graal
stands rather in the light of a discovery without a con-
sequence which I can pretend to develop here ; and (b)
the reason will, I think, be evident because this side
which I have mentioned reposes in certain secret schools
now existing in Europe. In these the Talismans of the
Tarot have been pressed into the service of a logical, con-
structed system of symbolism with results that are very
curious. It might or might not be useless to speak about
the system in public, supposing that this were possible, but
I think that there are considerations involved which
would be almost an unknown language to people who have
not had their training in a particular school of thought.
Those who know regard the results as important, yet
those who see the importance have not in most cases
any idea of the term. As I must now say that this
term belongs under one of its aspects to the domain of
occultism, it should be understood that my strictures on
wild Tarot speculations ought to carry a certain weight
because those speculations are of the occult order. If
any of my readers should wish to look a little further
into a strange and problematical subject, they may be
recommended to consult one book called Le Tarot des
Bohemiens, issued by the French school of philosophical
Martinism. I can tell them for their consolation that
from root to branch it is a tissue of errors, because this
school has not the true reading, while specific alternative
readings in other academies are also wrong. Except in
purely archaeological aspects, the inquirer can, however,
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
get nothing better than the content of this work, and if
he misses the major sacraments he will find a limited
quantity of fortune-telling rubbish therein which is
altogether diverting and may be mastered with a little
trouble.
It must be explained that the old sheaf of oracles
consists of seventy-eight cards, of which fifty-six are
the equivalents of ordinary playing-cards, plus four
knights ; and the remaining twenty-two are pictorial
keys, the symbolical nature of which is seen on their
surface, though it must be understood that hereon all
of them are conventional and many are grotesque, as
if they were coarse allegories. The keys are allocated
by interpretation in various orders to the letters of the
Hebrew alphabet, and herefrom as a root many insti-
tuted analogies with Kabalism have been devised by
the divergent schools which have devoted their atten-
tion to the pictures. The Sephirotic attributions which
have been obtained in this way are especially remark-
able. I offer my assurance, as one who has more to
lose than to gain by making the statement, that certain
secret schools have developed their scheme of symbolic
interpretation to a very high point by the allocation of
these cards according to a system which is not known
outside them.
Having made this explanation, my next point is to
state that the four palmary symbols of the Tarot are —
1. The Cup, corresponding to Hearts in the common signs of cards.
2. The Wand, corresponding to Diamonds in the common signs of
cards.
3. The Sword, corresponding to Spades in the common signs of cards.
4. The Pentacle, corresponding to Clubs in the common signs of
cards.
The Wand is alternately a sceptre in the Tarot
descriptions, but its proper alternative in the symbolism
is a spear or lance, the misdescribed Diamond in the
modern suit being obviously the head of the weapon.
In respect of the Pentacle that which is depicted under
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
this name answers to a dish, usually after the outline of
a four-leaved shamrock, or alternatively of a circle. In
either case the emblem is also misdescribed under the
term Pentacle, which must have five angles or flanges.
With these modifications, which are in no sense of an
arbitrary kind, the Tarot suits are actually the Graal
Hallows.
And now, to move one step forward, being the last
point to which I can take the subject : The place of
the Cup in the extension of the symbolism under the
light of all its analogies, corresponds to the place of
spiritual life ; to the rest of knowledge ; to the receptacle
of the graces which are above and to the channel of their
communication to things which are below ; but this
is the equivalent ex hypothesi of the arch-natural
Eucharist. In a word, it is the world not manifested,
and this is the world of adeptship, attained by sanctity.
In so far therefore as it can be said in the open day,
hereof is the message of the Secret Tradition in Christian
times — as it remains among the guardians thereof— on
the subject of the Graal Mystery. So also under a
certain transfiguration does the Graal still appear in
the Hidden Sanctuaries.
But now in conclusion generally as to all the schools
of symbolism, successive or coincident : it follows from
the considerations which I have developed in what
approaches an exhaustive manner that we are con-
fronted by two theses, from the first of which it follows
that the Mystery of Divine Attainment is of that
order which passes into experience, while dubiously
and elusively its traces are met with even in the modern
world, though it does not say " Come quickly " to the
majority of aspirants. From the second it follows that
the great secret — at least so far as its specific declaration
and visible existence are concerned — has passed into
abeyance in the external sanctuaries. I can scarcely
conceive of a clearer issue established by way of contrast.
Several accredited scholars have recognised the evidences
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
of secret doctrine in the Graal literature, more especially
in respect of the Eucharist, but some of them have
been disposed to account for its presence by a familiarity
with obscure apocryphal gospels. This is a source in
legend, and of sources in the experiences of sanctity
or of perpetuated secret doctrine they knew little
enough. In particular they did not dream that such
perpetuation could have taken place except in heretical
schools. They appreciated the concealment of sects
which carried their lives in danger, but not the conceal-
ment of the sanctuary. There is, however, the vision
of the Third Heaven, about which it is not lawful to
speak, the reason being that it exceeds expression, and
utterance is therefore only by way of similitude and
approximation. The secret school for which I look
and of which I recognise the existence did not differ
in doctrine from the external ways of salvation, but it
opened out the infinite world which lies behind the
manifest life of teaching — that world which was recog-
nised by St. Augustine when he said — as we have seen
— that the definition of Three Persons subsisting in one
God was not an expression which satisfied the mind,
but that some kind of expression is necessary. This
school never came forward with improvements on
doctrine, with proposals to reduce doctrine, or with
new opinions on the Eucharist. It carried the implicits
of religious teaching to their final issue ; the implicits
were Catholic and the issue was also Catholic.
Therefore so it remains to this day, while we in our
spiritual isolation are conscious of loss everywhere.
The 'great rites are celebrated, the high offices con-
tinue, the moving liturgical formulae are recited from
day to day and year after year ; we pass hurriedly
through the crowded streets, over the quiet country-
sides ; we pause by solitary seas. The veiled voices
signify the Presence, yet the Master is taken away, and
we know not where they have laid Him. The great
legends tell us that He has been assumed into Heaven
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
because of the evil times, or that He is in a place of con-
cealment, or that He is not seen so openly. Prohibited,
spoliated and extirpated with fire and sword, the memory
of the dead sects of Southern France can offer us at
their highest only the lips of the noble lady Esclair-
monde communicating the osculum fraternitatis — con-
solamentum of all things saddest — through the flames
of the auto-da-fe. One Masonic chivalry consents to
protect us from the insidious attacks of the infidel if
we visit the holy fields, but it is confessed that the
sepulchre is empty and we know that the worst danger
is from the infidel who is within. A later and more
obscure chivalry, with a vainer office of observance,
keeps ritual guard over the shadow of a sacred legend,
we asking the daughters of Zion whether there is any
greater desolation. It pledges us to maintain the
Sepulchre when it is agreed that the Master is not there,
and we continue to say with our lips : Et unam sanctam
catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, with a certain uncon-
scious relief that the word Credo stands far away in
the symbol. Saddest and proudest of all, the great
craft legends of Masonry tell us that until that which
from time immemorial has been lost in the secret places
is at length restored to the mysteries, the true temple
can only be built in the heart. The Kabalistic sages
are also waiting for the word, that there may be mercy
on every side, and the stress and terror of the centuries
is because Adonai has been substituted for Jehovah in
the true form thereof. It is only the higher side of
alchemy which, without faltering, has continued to
point the path of attainment, speaking of no change,
no substitution therein — telling us of the one matter,
the one vessel, the one way of perfection, yet also saying
that except the Divine Guidance lead us in the path
of illumination, no man shall acquire the most hidden
of all secrets without a Master, which is another mode
of expressing the same thing. I suppose that there is
no more unvarying witness continued through the ages,
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Secret Tradition in Christian Times
amidst all which we have felt, as we still feel, that only
a small change in the axis of inclination would transform
the world of greatest inhibition into that of the greatest
grace. It is as if we were in the position of Perceval,
according to the High History — as if we had failed only
on account of " one little question." But we do not
know what it is, or rather we know it only in its ex-
ternal and substituted forms. We go on, therefore, sadly
enough and slowly, yet in a sense we are haunted men,
with a voice saying ever and again in our ears : " Ask,
and ye shall receive " ; search your heart, for the true
question is within and the answer thereof. — A sad and
strange enchantment has fallen even over the animal
world, and all the gentle creatures with kind eyes are
waiting with us for the close of the adventurous times,
the term of enchantment in Logres, and the unspelling
quest. Of these three things, two are of the Order of
Mercy and one is of the High Order of the Union.
All this is not to say that the high offices fail, that the
great conventions are abrogated, that the glorious sense
of chivalry towards our second mother in those sodalities
which are external — but yet in that order are some
intellectual and some also spiritual — that this sense is
not of the highest counsel. But a time comes when
the " glory to God in the highest," having been declared
sufficiently without, is expressed more perfectly within,
and we know in fine that this glory is to be revealed.
The same story of loss is therefore everywhere, but
it is never told twice in the same way. Now it is a
despoiled sanctuary ; now a withdrawn sacramental
mystery ; now the abandonment of a great military
and religious order ; now the age-long frustration of
the greatest building plan which was ever conceived;
now the Lost Word of Kabalism ; now the vacancy of
the most holy of all sepulchres. But the sanctuary is
sacred, the king is to return, the Order of Chivalry
has not really died ; at some undeclared time, and
under some unknown circumstances, the Word which
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
gives the key to some treasure-house of the building
plan will be restored in full, and meanwhile the
quest is continued for ever ; the true Word will
also be restored to Israel, and so from age to age goes
on the great story of divine expectation. Meanwhile
the Christian mystics say : " Take no thought for the
morrow, because it is here and now " ; and to this grand
antiphon the response of the Hermetic Mystery is :
" Even so, in the place of wisdom there is still the Stone
of the Wise."
608
BOOK X
THE SECRET CHURCH
THE ARGUMENT
I. THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE HOLY GRAAL. — A
summary of previous considerations — The way of attain-
ment in the Secret Schools — Of the Interior Mass — Other
gleanings concerning the Epiclesis clause — That the Secret
Tradition does not impeach the official Church — Position of
the several schools on this subject — There is no competitive
orthodoxy — The eulogy of the external Church — Of what is
to be understood by its desolation — Of its restrictions at
this day — The sects and the Church. II. THE GOOD
HUSBANDMAN. — The Graal legends and the Divine Alliance
— That there is one Sanctuary — That the House of Doctrine
is one — Of that which is behind the Visible Church —
Graal literature as the spiritual emotion of the Church —
Its high texts as products of monasticism — The maiming
of the outer Church — The inner priesthood and the secret
Mass — The universal experiment — One of its concealments
— Further concerning its rumours — Peculiar use of Eucha-
ristic transubstantiation — The official Church and the
seat of its power — Testimony of certain prelates in respect
of Papal Rome — The yoke and the burden — Strictures on
altered procedure in respect of the Eucharist — Traces of a
school of patience and a school of higher experience — Of its
connection with the life of the world within and without
the Church. III. THE CATHOLIC SECRET OF THE LITERA-
TURE.— Question as to the Custodians of the Secret Tradition
—The Consensus Spiritus Sancti — The two apparent
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"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
schools of the Secret Tradition — Further concerning spiritual
alchemy — The Quest of the Graal — Of Kabalism and
Masonry — The proper understanding of a doctrine of loss in
the Church — The Church as the House of Souls — Orthodoxy
of the Graal literature — Its branches from this point of view
— That its rumours and implicits are not the voice of a
rival Christian conclave working in the hidden places — The
same is to be said of Kabalism and Masonry — The position
of Alchemy — Removal of a certain interdict on speech and
thought — Councillor Karl von Eckartshausen — The Cloud
on the Sanctuary — Loupoukine — His Characteristics of
the Interior Church — The conception of a Holy Assembly—
The sodality of a consciousness in common — The rise of a
more express witness — A confusion in respect of the evidence
— An illustration from the natural world — The Visible
Church in connection with the doctrine of a Holy Assembly
— Comparison of the Secret Church to a School of the
Prophets — Inferences from secret fraternities — Testimony
of the Sons of the Valley — Specific claim put forward by
The Cloud on the Sanctuary — Its reduction into a com-
plete schedule — The similar evidence of Loupoukine —
Errors of expression in both witnesses — That the Secret
Church is an arbitrary name — Definition of the mystic
life — Of certain elements in the hands of the Graal
romancers — That the Secret Church recognises the external
Church — The consensus of sanctity — That the Secret Church
is not an instituted Assembly — Of Mass in the Secret
Church — Of certain limits to expression — The Graal
literature as a rumour of Sanctuary Doctrine — Mystery
concerning the rumour — How the official Sanctuary is made
void. IV. THE MYSTERY WHICH is WITHIN. — The Secret
Church as an hypothesis, an implicit and a truth — Condi-
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"The Argument
tions of its membership — That it has not issued manifestoes
— In what sense the evidence is misleading concerning it —
The silence of its work — Its chief mystery as that of Divine
Communication — Its connection with the Eucharist — The
Secret Church as an integration of believers in the higher
consciousness. V. THE SECLUDED AND UNKNOWN SANC-
TUARY.— An alternative for the romances of the Graal — A
further summary concerning the Secret Tradition — The
mystery of love and the world of grace — Another reconsidera-
tion of the literature — A new comparison from alchemy —
The Graal romances as an implied impeachment of Rome —
Whether the Graal Church stood for official Christianity —
The Rich Fisherman from this point of view — Difficulties
of this assumption — Conclusion that the Hidden Sanctuary
could not represent the Visible Church of Rome — Evidence
of the literature itself on this subject — Whether the litera-
ture was., in some other sense, hostile to Rome — Assumption
that the Graal sanctuary was really the Celtic Church —
Evidence of the literature from this standpoint — The claim
of the Lesser Chronicles is in conflict with the assumption —
The Greater Chronicles are in some respects militantly
Roman — One text only may be concerned with the aggran-
disement of British Christianity — A note on the German
cycle — Of certain plain stories told by the Graal texts —
The mystery of the Graal Sanctuary — The makers of the
literature did not dream of a pan-Britannic Church —
Clearness of its concern at the highest — A lesson of these
considerations — Its various counsels of caution — The true
Question of the Graal — The literature as a witness of the
Church — Of experience in transcendence — The harmony of
all quests and histories outside the terms of romance — The
Hidden Church of the Holy Graal — The hope of Western
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Mysticism — The Secret Tradition in Catholic Experience.
VI. THE TRADITION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. — That
the Secret Tradition in Christian times was never 'put into
official language as by one instituted school which stood for
the whole — Eckartshausen approximated only — Loupoukine
expressed probably a strong intellectual sentiment — Were
there no traces in the annals of the Church itself ? — The
Disciplina Arcani — Whether this was imbedded in the
tradition of St. John the Divine — The Eucharist and the
beloved disciple — Traditions concerning St. John — The
rumour of his secret knowledge — In what manner he was
assumed by the physical alchemists — The search after
heresy — Some previous speculations — One suggested alterna-
tive— Of so-called Johannine Christians — Traditions con-
cerning St. John — Traces of a higher Gnosis — An unfinished
Quest. VII. THE CONCLUSION OF THIS HOLY QUEST. —
Of certain unfulfilled covenants — Preliminary remarks —
The Veil of the Eucharist — The French and German
Percivals — Collectanea Mystic a — The Lost Book — The
Great Experiment — The Inner House of Doctrine — The
world of attainment — Of the highest symbols as pretexts
— The Mystic Quest — A praise of scholarship — But of that
also which remains after — And this as a Spiritual Sun —
The monastic Graal — Of that which may be superadded to
the official consciousness of the Church — The many voices
of tradition — The one testimony — An end of these pleadings
— The colophon.
614
BOOK X
THE SECRET CHURCH
I
THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE HOLT GRAAL
Two things follow from the considerations of the ninth
book : (a) That there are or there have been custodians
of secret knowledge in Christian times, but I express
only my personal view if I say that they remain to this
day ; (b) that the term of their purpose does not differ
in kind from that of the external Churches ; but (c) by
their claim they had carried the Great Experiment further.
Their testimony offers therefore (i) deeper intimations
of Church doctrine ; (2) a contribution in concealment
to the annals of the life of sanctity ; (3) by the remem-
brance— in perpetuity of dedication — that there is one
thing needful ; (4) and this is to partake, if it be pos-
sible, of Divine Substance — that is, spirit and life — of
which the impermanent consubstantiation with Divine
Humanity in the official Eucharist is the vestige in
symbolism only. The way of attainment must have
had its doctrinal correspondence in the Descent of the
Paraclete. It does not follow that the custodians
celebrated what we understand by a Mass, but it is
impossible to delineate their process by a stricter analogy.
After exhausting all other considerations we can speak
of it only in this manner. I suggest that it was said
in the heart, and that Christ came down into the heart.
It follows that for those unseen masters, as for us also,
the Mysterium Fidel was the Eucharist. The Greek
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Epiclesis clause may pass, therefore, among official things
as the nearest approach to a rite above all things valid,
that is, manifesting supernaturally. Its history is one
of the most interesting in the wild garden of liturgical
formulae. It should be understood, in this connection,
that during the earlier days of the Church there was
not a method of consecration which prevailed every-
where ; the Latin rite held, with certain variations,
to the canonical words of institution, as I have shown
in a previous section ; but there are traces of instances in
which it was performed by the recitation of an Gratia
Dominica — possibly the Pater noster over the elements,
thus by the hypothesis converting the daily bread into
heavenly manna. By the hypothesis also, the Epiclesis
clause brought down upon the elements the influence
and even the presence of the Holy Ghost, and it must
be admitted that this contains, ritually speaking, a very
high suggestion. At the Council of Florence the Latins
required the Greeks to expunge the Epiclesis, with all
forms of invocation, and there can be no doubt that
they were doctrinally and technically correct, within the
convention of their own order, because it was admitted
on all hands that the words of institution produced a
valid Eucharist, and the principle of invocation was to
give the officiating priest within the range of the con-
vention an express and personal part in the mystery of
consecrating, which, by the same hypothesis, must be
regarded as superfluous, though we can — on our own
part — discern a deeper reason. The clause remains to
this day in the Greek Church, and for those who lay
stress on its efficacy that Church has therefore the words
but not seemingly more than the outward sign of that
life which should be resident therein.
If it be said that in these considerations the Churches
are impeached collectively, and because the literature of
the Graal creates exactly the same contrast in the same .
manner exactly, that it therefore concurs in the im-
peachment, the conclusion on the surface may seem
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The Secret Church
almost irresistible, but that it is untrue is my whole
contention. The facts which here follow must be held
to silence any voices of dissent. We have seen that
there are three literatures which testify concerning
the voided House of Doctrine, (a) The first is the
Graal literature, and in no uncertain way does it bear
witness that the official Church has the efficacious
means, (b) The second is Zoharic Kabalism, with all
its connections, but while it tells of the cloud on the
official sanctuary of Israel, this also bears witness (i) that
Israel is of God ; (2) that the Church in Israel contains
the Words of the Mystery, with the reflection at least of
the cohabiting glory, and (3) that the way of salvation
is that Law by which the world was made in Mercy.
(c) The third is Masonry, and in the dual schools thereof
—which are the Craft and High Degrees — it bears the
same witness : (i) that the Symbolic Temple is the
Holy Place, but the Spiritual Temple is to come ;
(2) that the Lord has risen truly, and though at the
present time we do not know certainly where we shall
find Him, we are on the Quest which does not fail. I
say therefore again that there has been no more faithful
testimony throughout the centuries. It does not concern
a competitive orthodoxy or a distinct process, but the
development of the same doctrine and the extension of
the same process to what is called in Masonry the ne
-plus ultra degree. It is not that anything exists outside
the Church, but that more subsists within it than is
comprehended by the lower grades. The equivalent is
that the Law of Nature reflects the Law of Grace,
and the perfect paradox that Nature imitates Grace.
The external Church is therefore, and so it remains,
that body in which the first work of regeneration takes
place — and this, as one may say, of necessity ; it is the
reflection of life everlasting projected on the perishable
plane. It is in this sense the condign and legitimate
governor of all holy external places. The Church is the
good husbandman who prepares the ground and tills
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the earth of humanity. It fertilises that earth after
various manners, as, for example, by the laws of moral
conduct, by the great literatures, by the high consecra-
tion of the seven sacraments, by the water, the oils and
the wine. In all these ways it sows with a generous hand
the seeds of secret life. But the earth is hard and the
earth is also unresponsive. The seed will germinate in
many directions, and the earth will therefore be irradiated
by a certain undeclared presence of the secret life ; but
it issues above the ground only in a few cases, and then
the individual enters into the manifested life of sanctity.
It is a question thereafter of the particular quality of
the earth and the environment of the life. Generally
the growth is stunted and too weak to put forth its
powers. It is only on rare occasions that they spring up
into the high light and the clear air, lifting the radiant
glory of a perfect head amidst their peers.
The hidden life of the soul is well known to the
doctors of the soul, and the Church has also its hidden
life, wherein it communicates with all things nearest
to the Divine in the higher consciousness. Official
doctrine is, however, in the same position as normal
consciousness ; it covers a part of the field only. There
is therefore, on both sides, a certain sense of the incom-
mensurate, and assuredly it is for this reason that the
Churches are desolate ; such desolation is, however, on
account of that which is in hiding, not of that which
is withdrawn. The offices are not abrogated and the
sacraments are still administered, being also efficacious
up to a determined point. Perhaps indeed the desolation
is not less especially in ourselves, so that it is we who
individually and collectively have helped to make void
the House of Doctrine. The fact that the external
Church is from this point of view in widowhood makes
its desertion a grave offence against the high unwritten
code of chivalry, just as a dereliction of masonic good
conduct is implied in forsaking one's mother lodge.
At the same time the great work can sometimes be done
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The Secret Church
from without as well as from within, but in this case that
work is an approximation towards a higher side of the
Church.
It follows that the official Church can act only up to
the extent of its consciousness, and the side on which it
has derogated has been the side of policy and conduct.
We can account in this manner for all its imperfections,
for that which we term its abuses, but there will remain
the glories of its doctrine as things which, in their proper
understanding, emerge apart and unaffected. These are
the treasures which it was instituted to preserve, and
if it has added some things to the jewel-house which are
of secondary or even dubious value, our part is to wait
for its wakening in the higher mind. The Greek Rite
has slept over-long therein, and the Roman Rite has had
nightmares, but the happy Prince, who is a true Son of
the House, will arrive one of these days and will ask the
unspelling question. Meanwhile, the individual man
must be appraised at his highest only, so far as that
highest has been indicated, and it is the same with the
Church. The lower standards are deceptive, and it
is for this reason that conduct — as we understand it
conventionally — is comparatively of less importance ;
it is that which maintains the world and not that which
renews it. There is also the irrefutable consideration of
all those unhappy sects which exist for the dissemination
of a contracted symbolism under the guise of pure
doctrine, thinking that the situation can be ameliorated
by taking in their fairyland. The undue multiplication
of symbols tends, of necessity, to attenuate their force
by spreading it over too large a surface, but it is not
to be compared with the malefic dismemberment of
symbolism, which produces its paralysis, for the loss of
so many limbs causes the body to decay and puts an end
to the office of the Wardens.
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
II
THE GOOD HUSBANDMAN
At the risk of some repetition on a subject of all so
vital, I will put the position thus from another stand-
point. The value of the Graal legends resides in their
suggestions and lights towards a concordat of Divine
Alliance, while the Graal Castle is the House of Alliance
and of the doctrine thereto belonging. The same
description applies to the Sanctuaries of the other
schools, on the understanding that in the last resource
all the Sanctuaries are one. They do not differ from
the external Houses of Doctrine into which we were
born and wherein we were first nourished by the food
of souls. Here also — if we set apart innumerable
temples of the fantastic spirit — the House of Doctrine
is one, and the official does not differ from the mystical ;
but in the one House there are many chambers, being
those of the soul's advancement, and the soul in response
to its election proceeds by stage and by stage on the
ascent upward — or beyond and further beyond into
that more secret place which lies behind the sanctuary of
the Visible Church. The correspondence in identity
hereto is the oratory of the spiritual alchemist, who
testifies by first-hand experience at the Fountain of
Nature and Grace that nothing has been lost, that he
has himself recovered the working process in which the
Trinity is manifested and the plan of redemption is
exhibited.
The Graal literature was the spiritual emotion of
the Church expressed in romance. The texts which do
not correspond to this description are of no importance
as mystic texts of the legend. I set apart, however, the
lost poem of Guiot, which will be considered in another
section. The high texts of all are products of monas-
ticism, and — as they are extant among us — the vision
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The Secret Church
which is the true Graal came out of cells and scriptoria.
We must not go further for that which is ready to our
hand in the nearest places. The monks conceived the
high miracle of sanctity and connected it with a
wonderful and pious legend. They knew so much that
they knew also the void in the heart of the age and the
maiming of the outer Church. The efficacious Graal
— that which alone profits us — came out of their fasts,
watches and prayers. They did not invent the Secret
Words and the super-apostolical priesthood, but they
knew of these rumours ; they knew that many strange
quests were pursued about them ; they dreamed of
mysteries of sanctity which they had not fathomed, and
we can well understand that the story of Prester John
re-expressed the dream after a manner of parable in
their yearning minds. WThen they left the House of
Doctrine void in respect of its chief Hallow, they meant
only that the Church shared on its manifest side the
inhibition of the age ; they felt all that was wanting
thereto. But the first makers of texts had heard of
those things more plainly — that is, of a priesthood within
the priesthood, of a Mass behind the Mass, or rather the
equivalents of these by the pursuit of an experiment
which was identical with that of the Church carried—
as I have said — to an advanced degree. The putative
letter of Prester John was perhaps inventeS expressly to
put this claim forward in a singularly evasive manner, but
one certain to attract universal interest and attention.
The experiment had been pursued everywhere, the
aphorism which ruled it being omnia exeunt in mysterium,
the pursuit of that Mystery to which St. Augustine
alluded when he said that Christianity had been always
in the world — to which the New Testament itself
alluded when speaking of the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the cosmic order. It follows that any
one who suggests that the experiment or the school
became Christian at a certain epoch is in error over
the elements of that subject to which must be attri-
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
buted in a superlative sense the locus communis of the
ecclesiastical test : Quod semper, quod ubique, quod db
omnibus. We should remember that things which concur
with one another do of necessity find one another at a
certain point of their extension ; the one Quest adopts
many veils, but without diminution of identity. It has
been disguised very often under the old formula con-
cerning words of power, but though this is a necessary
illustration, it carries a suggestion of fatality, because in
no instance did the sign survive the idea — and so lapse
into superstition — more frequently or with greater
facility. In its proper understanding it corresponds
to the idea of an union between the expressed con-
sciousness of the soul and the Word of God — the verbum
caro factum, declaring itself in the world and in the
heart of man. Robert de Borron heard or read of the
rumour in some such form and he combined it with secret
words of Christ. He knew so little of its horizon that
he left it an open question whether the words were
Eucharistic or not. Those who converted his work
into prose concluded that they could have no other
office, and so allocated them accordingly. The author
of the Book of the Holy Graal, having certain materials,
including those which were incorporated in his prologue,
put forward the rumour in the guise of a sacerdotal
mystery and followed those who had preceded him in
developing the conversion legend. Guiot de Provence
represented the secret custodians as an autonomous
chivalry after the model of the Knights Templars, bring-
ing into it materials from oriental sources. Other
traditions had already presented Joseph of Arimathaea
as the Grand Master of an instituted knighthood. The
authors of the Longer Prose Perceval and the Quest of
Galahad saw that the whole subject belonged to the
Church, and they connected it with Eucharistic tran-
substantiation as the most approximate gate through
which supernatural faith could follow those things which
issue in mystery. They were glad enough when their
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The Secret Church
symbolism had served its purpose to allow its dissolution,
as I have shown, and it has been in no sense my design
to suggest that they had overcome all burdens of their
period by an excess of wisdom ; the glass through which
they looked was clouded and scoriated enough, and in
manifesting the doctrine as they did I suppose that its
intolerable sense had never occurred to them. It is
sufficient for our purpose that they discerned something
of the secrets which lay beyond, to do which they
must have travelled far. I am sure also that in common
with the independent schools of concealment they
distinguished between the Church as the custodian
of Rite, Symbol and Doctrine and the seat of govern-
ment at Rome. In this connection it is wholesome
to remember, among many other points that might
be enumerated : (i) That before 1000 A.D. Claudius,
Archbishop of Turin, characterised the censure pro-
nounced on his anti-papal writings as the voice of the
members of Satan ; (2) that Arnulph, the Bishop of
Orleans, at the Council of Rheims pointed to the Roman
Pontiff, saying : " Who is that seated upon a high throne
and radiant with purple and gold ? ... If he thus follow
uncharitableness, ... he must be Antichrist sitting in
the Temple of God ; (3) that Everard, Bishop of Salzburg,
said much later : " He who is the servus servorum Dei
desires to be lord of lords ; he profanes, he pillages, he
defrauds, he robs, he murders, and he is the lost man
who is called Antichrist ; (4) that Cardinal Benno,
speaking of Sylvester II., said that by God's permission
he rose from the abyss ; (5) that the same pope was
described at the Council of Brixen as the false monk
and the prince of abomination. These were the accusa-
tions of prelates and with them may be compared the
opinion of Figueiras the troubadour, who described
Rome as an immoral and faithless city, having its seat
fixed in the depths of hell ; that of Petrarch, who called
Avignon the western Babylon, and — as a comparison by
way of antithesis with the Rich Fisherman — exclaimed :
623
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
" Here reigns a proud race of fishermen who are poor
no longer ; " and that of the same poet who described the
papal court as a people who follow the example of Judas
Iscariot — in other words, selling God for money, like
the King of Castle Mortal. So also St. Bridget termed
Rome the whirlpool of hell and the house of mammon,
wherein the devil barters the patrimony of Christ.
I think it has been indicated abundantly in the course
of this work, but more especially in the present sections,
that the high truth is in all Church doctrine, and there-
fore in citing these instances I also am far from expressing
the spirit of impeachment ; but on the side of policy,
apart from that of teaching, there is evidence enough
that the yoke was no longer easy nor the burden light.
It is conceivable that the symbol of the voided House
of Doctrine was an appeal against the Church in so far
as it had been unfaithful to itself, a protest against the
spirit of the world which had invaded the sanctuary.
The admission of these facts does not derogate from
the claim that the Church had all the means. Even in
new definitions and altered practice there may h'ave been
a guiding hand. It will be suggested, I know, that at
the period of the Graal literature two unhappy ferments
were working in the Western branch : (i) The denial
of the chalice ; (2) the various doctrinal tendencies
which resulted in the definition of transubstantiation.
From this point of view the wound of the Latin Church
would be that it misconstrued the Mysterium Fidei ;
that it had, in fact, five wounds corresponding to the
five changes of the Graal. Of these changes the last
only seemed to be a chalice, for at that time it is said
that there was no chalice, and the mystic reason of this
is that the Dominus qui non pars est sed totum is not con-
tained in a chalice though the Lord is Pars hereditatis
mece et calicis mei. The Latin Church cannot be accused
of having failed to discern the Body of the Lord, but
it may be advanced that its discernment, like that of the
Greek orthodoxy, was apart from the life which their
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The Secret Church
own scriptures tell them is resident in the blood — that
is to say, it is the symbolical seat thereof. And yet
on the basis of transubstantiation it is difficult to reject
the Roman plea, that he who receives the Body receives
also the Blood, because that which is communicated in
the Eucharist is the living Christ made Flesh. To this
it may be rejoined that the implicit of the symbolism is
really in the contrary sense, that the elements are dual
to show how the flesh of itself profits nothing, while the
spirit and the truth are in the communication of Divine
Life. By those who regard transubstantiation as the
burden of the Church which defined it, there is a dis-
position to consider the Latin Eucharist as only a dis-
membered sacrament ; by those who look upon it
simply as a memorial, all subtleties notwithstanding,
there is a feeling that the memory is broken and that
the isolated sign does not signify fully. On the other
hand, that view which belongs more especially to the
Mystics, namely, that the covenant of Christ to his
followers concerns what I have called so frequently the
communication of Divine Substance, will, I think, be
aware that the accidents of such a communication are
not of vital consequence ; that perhaps the official
Church was even more subtle than it knew, because
it is certain that transposition or substitution in the
external signs cannot occasion even the shadow of
vicissitude in the mystery which is imparted. In fine,
to extinguish these questions, those wrho speak of Christ's
spiritual presence say well, but the mystery of abiding
redemption is the perpetuity of the incarnation in that
Church to which Christ came in flesh.
In conclusion, I do not confess that it would be
putting the case truly if it were said that at the period
of the Graal literature the highest minds of the Church
had grown weary of the Vatican and all its ways. I
think that for long, and for very long indeed, there had
existed an uncompetitive stream of tendency which
raised no voice, but pursued its path unobtrusively
2 R
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
towards a very high term. It had no remedies to offer
on the practical side of things and it was too wise to
denounce abuses which it was powerless to remedy-
even as I who write, supposing that I had attained the
term of the Great Experiment, should not for that
reason be qualified to purify the commercial houses of
exchange. That term belongs to a region about which
it is idle to speak in connection with schemes of amelio-
ration or the raising of the masses. So far as those
who have pursued or do now follow it have led or to-day
lead the life of the world, it is implied in their calling
that they should do what to do is given them, but in
respect of the Experiment itself, those who attain can
lead others on the way, but they do not bring back
helping hands for the furtherance and welfare of the
body politic. So much for the stream of tendency in
the earlier times. At a later period I do think that the
unknown mystics who wrote upon spiritual alchemy had
got to see not only where the path of sanctity led, but
that the Church as a whole had lost the power of leading.
They were made circumspect by the anxiety of their
position, and they spoke only in parables.
Ill
THE CATHOLIC SECRET OF THE LITERATURE
But if there were custodians of a Secret Tradition
at any time during the Christian centuries there arises
the inevitable question : Who were these mysterious
Wardens and also where were they ? Can we learn
anything about them ? What was this strange power
or influence working within the Church ? Well, in the
first place, it was not a power at all in any acting,
governing, or intervening sense. When I speak about
the region of a higher consciousness behind the manifest
mind of the Catholic Church, it is equivalent to saying
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The Secret Church
that in the uttermost degrees of sanctity, the consensus
omnium sanctorum does by a certain participation become
the sensus Spiritus Sancti. It is, again, as if within the
Church Militant there had been always a little body
which had pursued a peculiar path and had travelled a
great distance, making no obvious sign. We are faced,
however, by the apparent problem of two schools which
seem to bear testimony in conflict, and there is the
witness to both in the Graal literature. The first is
that of spiritual alchemy, which knows not the voice
of faltering concerning the terra viventium and the
Eona Domini therein. Its correspondence in the Graal
literature is the grace and secret knowledge behind the
Eucharist, when the sensible veils of bread and wine and
the ultra-sensible veils of thaumaturgic transubstantia-
tion have utterly dissolved, and God is revealed in
Christ. The second is the testimony of Kabalism and
Masonry to the glory departed from the Sanctuary, and
hereof the Graal correspondence is the dispartition of
the Hallows, the removal of the Sacred Vessel and the
voiding of the Holy House. Looking, it will be said,
on either side ; on the experiment of alchemy, than
which nothing seems lost more obviously at this late day ;
on the Quest of the Graal, over which the chivalry of
Logres — except for twelve knights — broke and went to
pieces utterly ; on the theosophy of Israel, all dead and
all forgotten ; on the sad confession — ab origine symboli —
of loss and dereliction in Masonry ; how is there any
choice to be taken between either school ? If " green's
forsaken and yellow's forsworn," in virtue of what
melancholy persuasion can we exercise a preference
among them ? Surely beneath the title of this book
there should be written the word Ichabod, " the glory
has departed." On the contrary I have written : Vel
sanctum invenit, vel sanctum facit, for the implicits of
the Graal literature are the shadowed secrets of a Holy
School, or rather their inexpress formulation. I confess
that in either school it may seem difficult on the surface
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
to suppose another construction than that of a treasure
which there was but a treasure which is now withdrawn.
And, as if to accentuate the position, I have said on my
own part that the official sanctuary has closed down on
its higher consciousness. But in so recording I have
testified in the same terms that everything remains.
The house is not less mine because I have locked its
doors on the outer side ; the ancestral heirlooms are
still in my keeping, though I have not opened the secret
chambers for so many moons or years that I have forgotten
the fact of the keys still hanging, with many others, from
my girdle. The Church, in like manner, is still the
House of Souls ; the Castle behind which there is the
Earthly Paradise and Eden ; the Temple with a Sanctuary
on the other side of which there is the Ark of the New
Covenant — the Hidden Altar of Repose, wherein is the
Sacred Vessel. It is obvious therefore that no other
House of God is possible in this age, and that if I or
another were to institute a Church of the Holy Graal,
dedicated to the Quest of the Sacred Vessel, and in
hope of the grace thereof, I should have my pains for
my recompense and I should communicate nothing
therein. Our part is therefore one of watching and
prayer until such time as the Church herself unfolds
from within and all the doors are opened.
In harmony herewith, the characteristic of the Graal
literature is its great ostensible orthodoxy, and that
which is ostensible I regard also as implied and involved
within. Here and there we discern a dubious hint
which might signify a subdued hostility towards Rome ;
but its sacraments are still the sacraments ; its doctrines
are true doctrines, and its practices are the code of
spiritual life. The metrical romance of De Borron is
a Catholic poem, and if the Early Merlin and the Didot
Perceval are scarcely religious works, there is no tincture
of dissent from either institution or dogma ; there are
only the Secret Words and what is signified therein.
The Book of the Holy Graal is a religious romance, and
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The Secret Church
its one questionable element is the meaning of the
Super-Apostolical Succession. The zeal of the Graal
has eaten up the later Merlin in both the texts thereof.
The Longer Prose Perceval is the Church of chivalry
spiritualised. The Romance of Lancelot is the ideal
spirit in the exile of a morganatic marriage, but still
remembering Zion. The Quest of Galahad is of him
who came forth from Jerusalem and returned thereto ;
he was born in the place of the Great Mystery, but it
was necessary that he should be put outside the gates
thereof and should win his way back ; he is the only
seeker who belonged to the House from his beginning.
There is another point which is not of less importance,
and I hope that this also will be seen to follow with
clearness from what has been said previously. The
rumours and implicits of the Graal literature being in
no sense the voice of any Christian conclave speaking on
its own authority from the hidden places ; and Kabalism
—though it bears the same testimony — being a con-
fession of insufficiency on the part of a cognate but
non-Christian school, and therefore only an accessory
deponent ; it should be understood further that the
voice of Masonry is also not the authoritative voice of
such a conclave ; it is the testimony of those who knew,
who derived their symbolism from the old mysteries of
spiritual rebirth, and, for the rest, on their own warrants
made an experiment on the mind of their age. The
one voice which we can and must recognise as the most
approximate echo or replica of the Unknown Voice is
that of alchemy — which only adored and exemplified in
respect of Church doctrine. It is understood that I
do not put forward the literature of spiritual alchemy
as the cor-pus doctrinale of those who in Christian times
were the Wardens of the Secret Tradition. Masonry,
Kabalism, the root-matter of a few Graal books are all
in their special manner and under their particular
reserves the independent channels of the doctrine.
Deeply imbedded in the higher side of the Hermetic
629
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
works I believe that we get nearest to the Secret Tradi-
tion. A time came when the bare possibility of speaking
more openly led to more open speaking, and so in the
eighteenth century and the first flush of the age which
followed thereafter, we have two or three text-books
wherein are put forth the most express intimations on
the subject which have so far transpired in the world.
I will speak only of two, which were at once independent
and concurrent — Eckartshausen's Cloud on the Sanctuary
and Characteristics of the Interior Church, attributed
to a Russian named Lopoukine and said to be translated
from the Russian. The dates of these works are respec-
tively 1800 and 1 80 1.
Such as are acquainted with the literature of the
mystic life will not be unfamiliar with the conception
of a Holy Assembly in the hands of which the guidance
of the Christian Church is thought to have rested during
the ages of Christendom. It is not, by the claim put
forward, more especially a corporate union than the
life of humanity at large on this earth is also a corporate
union. It will not have occurred of necessity to my
colleagues in thought, but they will understand what
is meant when I say that the hypothetical Holy Assembly
should perhaps be described as the sodality of a con-
sciousness in common, and as I have spoken already of a
consciousness behind the Church as of a region now un-
trodden, it will be understood that on the present sup-
position this region is not vacant. As we have inferred
further from the researches of the ninth book that there
are in specific literatures the records of a Secret Tradition
in Christian times, the written veils of which are actually
those literatures, so in the Doctrine of the Holy
Assembly we find a late, sporadic, but unusually definite
witness which, after an entirely new manner, is saying
the same thing. I believe that the mode in which this
claim has been advanced, though in one sense it is the.
most temperate and moderate of all, does tend towards
a certain confusion because two streams of influence
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The Secret Church
are identified therein — one being the holy, exalted and
saving mind of the official Church at its own highest in
the manifest, and the other that of the Hidden School
itself as this is presented in the claim. The inference,
moreover, seems to be that the Holy Assembly is a kind
of head in concealment, and this I reject because of the
misconception which it tends to induce of necessity.
If we could suppose for a moment that man is the last
development and issue from the anthropoid ape —
much as one might agree to regard the story of the
princess who came out of the water as a little chronicle
of fact — that point — and whatever that point might
be — at which the animal consciousness passed into the
human consciousness would represent the analogical
kind of transition by which the members of the mystical
body enter — if they do enter — into the consciousness
of the Holy Assembly. But the human being is not
leading the anthropoid ape, nor are the adepts who
devised symbolical Masonry ruling the Craft from a
specific, unseen centre. The worst of all illustrations
would be, in like manner, to say that the Visible Church
is the body and the Secret Church is the head. The
Visible Church has been described most truly as the
mystical body of Christ, and the Real Presence in the
Eucharist is the mystical communication in perpetuity
of Christ's life to that body ; but this is on the under-
standing that the body is the incorporation of souls in
sanctity. In respect of the Holy Assembly a similar
description may obtain, but also on the understanding
that it is a generic union of illuminated spirits in Christ — •
making use of the term spirit in that sense which attri-
butes to man the possession of a higher soul. The head
is Christ in both cases indifferently, but in the case of
the Secret Church that Divine Union, which here is of
faith or imputation, has been established there under
the sun of consciousness.
Perhaps, within the more familiar forms of expression,
the idea of the Secret Church corresponds most closely
631
"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
with that which is understood by a school of the prophets,
though the term describes an advanced spiritual state
by one only of the gifts which belong thereto. The
gift itself has little connection with the external meaning
of prophecy ; it is not especially the power of seeing
forward, but rather of sight within. In subjects of
this kind, as in other subjects, the greater includes the
lesser — it being of minor importance to discern, for
example, the coming of Christ in a glass of vision than
to realise, either before or after, the deep significance
of that coming. So also the interpretation of doctrine
is not manifested so much by the exhibition of meaning
behind meaning as of truth understanding truth.
I suppose that it would be almost impossible to
undertake a more arduous task than that which is
imposed on me in these sections of this last book. My
experience in the secret fraternities is that those which
work under any warrants, and with any shadow of tradi-
tion behind them, suggest, in spite of their divergences,
a single root of all, and this is so patent that even in
exoteric circles the hand of the Hermetic brotherhoods
has been surmised in Craft Masonry ; of the Rosicrucians
in the high grades ; of so-called Magian adepts in
Knight Templary — and hence onward and onward.
The root fact at the back of all these dreams is the
actuality of an experiment which has always existed in
the world, which has never changed, which has been
pursued unceasingly by a few, the rumours of which are
everywhere, which has many literatures, and all these
literatures are veils. When the German poet Werner
produced his wonderful legend concerning the Sons of
the Valley as the guiding hand behind the old Order
of the Temple ; when he told how it was afterwards
withdrawn, so that they were left to their fate in the
power of the French King and the miserable pontiff ;
he — Werner — was dreaming of this Experiment and
those who pursued it. In after-days he struck out this
hypothesis and all element of life from his two strange
632
The Secret Church
plays ; but apart from any Templar hypothesis he
knew that he was on the right track, in the light of
which knowledge he took the path of Lancelot and
died as a priest of the Latin Church, having sung Mass
for I know not how many moons. When Eckartshausen,
who had been born in the sanctuary and was filled
with the spirit of the sanctuary, made an end of com-
posing little books of popular devotion which took
Germany and France by storm, he saw that the Great
Experiment and its great tradition were in truth the
secret of the sanctuary and the heritage thereof. People
who did not understand him said : " This is Deism " —
but it was the higher mystery of the Eucharist in the
adyta of a conceived Holy Assembly, and he it was —
as I have hinted — who, on the intellectual side, drew
nearest of all to the heart of truth within.
The scheme of his interpretation of those Mysteries
of Compassion which summarise God's providence
towards man for the fulfilment of our return into union
may be divided into a part of preamble and a part of
definition. The preamble announces the conditions by
which an entrance is hypothetically possible into the
communion of saints. The requisite faculty is the in-
terior sense of the transcendental world, and the opening
of this sense is the beginning of Regeneration, under-
stood as the eradication of that virus which entered into
man at the Fall. Rebirth has three stages — that of the
intelligence, that of the heart and will, but that in fine
which — seeing that it embraces the entire being — is
called corporeal rebirth, because the beast is also saved
together with the man, and the Great Quintessence by
which the soul is converted transmutes the body as
well. It is held to follow herefrom that union with
God is possible in this life in the opening of the world
within us by a triple gradation through the moral, meta-
physical and plenary worlds, wherein is the Kingdom
of the Spirit. This is the process of Regeneration ex-
pressed in other terms. So far as regards the preamble,
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
but the dogmatic part affirms : (i) that an advanced
school has existed from the beginning of our history,
deriving directly from Christ, as He in Whom there
dwells substantially the whole plenitude of God ; (2) that
this is the enlightened community of the interior Church,
disseminated throughout the world and governed therein
by one spirit ; (3) that it is the most hidden of sodalities ;
(4) that the outer school, which is the visible Church,
is founded thereon, and by its symbols and ceremonies
it gives an external utterance to the truth which abides
in the Hidden Sanctuary ; (5) that the work of the
Interior Church has been the building of a Spiritual
Temple of regenerated souls ; (6) that it possesses the
direct knowledge of those means by which man is restored
to his first estate ; (7) that the external Church became
a subsequent necessity by the frailty of man as a whole ;
(8) that the external worship fell away automatically
from the service within ; (9) that the Church which
was founded in Abraham was raised to perfection in
Christ ; (10) that the Inmost Sanctuary is without
change or shadow of vicissitude; (11) that it is the
union of those who have received the light and share in the
communion of saints ; (12) that it unites the science
of the old, external Covenant with that of the new and
interior Covenant ; (13) that it has three degrees cor-
responding to the stages of Regeneration ; (14) that
herein repose the mysteries of all true knowledge ;
(15) that it resembles no secret society, for all external
forms have passed utterly away ; (16) that the path
thereto is Wisdom and the way is Love ; (17) that
although the Inner Sanctuary has been separated from
the Temple, they are destined for reunion ; (18) that
the Way which is Wisdom and Love is also Christ ;
(19) that the Mystery of the Incarnation is the deep
Mystery of re-union with God ; (20) that man in his
first estate was the Temple of Divinity, and God in
His wisdom has projected the rebuilding of this Temple ;
(21) that the plans of His scheme are in the Holy
634
The Secret Church
Mysteries and constitute the secret of Regeneration,
which is the royal and sacerdotal science ; (22) that
man approximates to Regeneration, and does in fine
attain it, by the discernment of the Body and Blood of
Christ, or, as I have myself expressed it continually
throughout this work, by the Mystery of the Eucharist.
The same testimony was given independently at the
same time by the Chevalier Loupoukine in his little
tract on the Characteristics of the Interior Church. He
defined the higher spiritual mind as that of conscious-
ness in grace only, by which those who participate
therein become that which Christ is by His nature.
Here also the Great Work is that of Regeneration,
which is accomplished in Christ, and the Church within
has the keys of the process. The testimony is also
identical as to the sanctity and indefectible character
of the external Church, which is the means of entrance
into the Church of Christ unseen. The way, again, is
Love, as the essence of the Body of Christ ; by Regene-
ration that Body is reborn in us ; and so the whole
process — though in neither case is the truth stated
expressly — becomes the arch-natural Mystery of the
Eucharist.
There are errors of expression in both these works,
and, as I have said, there is a certain confusion ; they
are not to be taken by themselves or in connection
simply with one another ; but it will be evident that,
after their own manner, they bear the same testimony
as the schools of tradition in Christian time and as the
higher literature of the Graal.
It will be seen otherwise that the Secret Church is
an arbitrary name adopted to describe the penetralia
of the tradition in secret ; the idea itself does not
correspond to any titular description, and in adopting
of necessity some distinguishing name, I have chosen
one which in several respects is perhaps the most
arbitrary of all ; but it serves to particularise the school
as essentially Christian. Whether in the East or the
635
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
West, I believe that there are still custodians in the
world, for the hidden truth does not perish. It is not
a sectarian school, and I think that it has even abandoned
all those Houses of Initiation, the fact of which has
transpired in the outer world. Its reflections, however,
remain imbedded therein. For those secret fraternities at
the present day which confess to two incorporated orders
and to have recipients in both, it corresponds to that
third Order from which they claim to hold — though
how they do not know. For those Masonic Rites of
the past which were, by their own imputation, under
the obedience of Unknown Superiors, whom they never
saw probably, these Superiors would answer to the
Holy School. It is the Holy Assembly of Eckartshausen
and the Interior Church of Loupoukine ; it is the
Crowned Masters of Alchemy ; it is the Unknown
Philosopher of early Martinism, but for Martinism this
Leader was the Repairer Himself, who is certainly the
first-fruits of the Great Transfiguration. I believe
that if any member of this school were authorised to
manifest, he would come — and this I shall reiterate-
like Melchisedech out of Salem, carrying Bread and
Wine. Meanwhile, their old rumours are everywhere,
and it is not curious that they are in the Graal literature ;
having regard to its subject-matter, it would be more
curious if they were not. The mystic life is the way
of the Secret Sanctuary ; it is the way of the opening
of consciousness towards the things that are Divine.
The makers of the Graal books found certain elements
to their hands, and they incorporated them as they best
could. The literature expresses after several manners
its absolute belief in the truth of doctrinal Christianity,
but also that behind all doctrine there was something
great and undemonstrable, the direct knowledge of
which had departed because the world was unworthy.
Like the Graal literature, the Secret Church recognises
fully the external Church and presents something from
within it. I conclude that a valid Mass has always been
636
The Secret Church
said in Rome and the other assemblies, but unfortunately
at the present time it is a memorial rather than a
realisation. Transubstantiation and reservation are the
nearest approaches to the idea of the arch-natural
Eucharist. There is also in the Christian Church
generally a consensus of sanctity at the height, and it is
the reflected glory of a greater height beyond. But
this is only an affirmation on the testimony of all the
saints, after every deduction has been made for the
decorative renunciations and denials of the self-abnegating
mind.
By summary, therefore, the term of research in the
doctrine of the Secret Church is no instituted Assembly
— not even an orthodoxy in ascension. It does not
mean that another Mass is said than that which is
celebrated daily at any high altar in Christendom ;
it does not mean that other elements are used or that
the words of consecration differ in kind or genus. The
Secret Church is our own Church when it has entered
into the deeper understanding of its proper implicits.
In so far as it can be said that external forms may remain
at all, I conceive that it uses the same forms, but in
virtue of interior organs which receive more fully from
the immanence of the Divine Will, so that the priest
who begins by reciting Introibo ad altar e Dei has the
direct experience that God is truly at His altar, and
thus he ascends the steps, discerning the Presence with
his eyes in the spiritual part of his nature, rather than
with faith. I would that it were here and now given
me to say how this condition is reached in the term of
sanctity ; but I think that it is by the imagination raised
in ecstasy. In the normal sense there is imagination,
but it is not a pure and constant fire ; there is also
ecstasy in many stages, and some of these are experienced
in the devout life apart from any shaping spirit. I put
it forward tentatively as a high speculation that the
union of which I have spoken is consummated in the
higher consciousness, so that the priest prepared thereto
637
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
enters and attains. What he celebrates there is a Mass
of the Beatific Vision ; but this is the Mass of the Graal.
At that Veni Creator the Lord Christ comes, and the
Comforter. I believe further that these things are
done in the sanctuary of a man's own spirit, as in an
Ark of the Graal.
It is obvious that this is the limit of things at which
expression suffers a complete paralysis. If I say with
Elias Ashmole that of what is beyond I know enough
to hold my tongue but not enough to speak, even then
it is obvious that I exceed my narrow measures : " I
know not, God knoweth." It is useless, in any case, to
pursue the evidential questions further than I have
taken them up to this point. I might have begun by
saying that what I proposed to present was an hypothesis
only ; the true evidences of the Secret Tradition are
in the Secret Schools, and of these it is idle to think that
one can produce more than the rumour in the open
day. I have left nothing unstated that it has been in
any sense possible to adduce ; those of my own tradition
will understand what remains over and what is indeed
involved. I put forward no claims ; that day has passed
long since when one man could be so much as desired
to believe on the authority of another where things
vital are involved. I invite no verdict ; I care utterly
nothing for the impression which the considerations of
this book may occasion in the academies of external
thought, and in the words of one who has preceded me
carrying no warrants but those of his own genius : in
any case whatsoever, I shall not on my own part be
" the less convinced or the more discouraged." The
rumours of Graal literature are a part of sanctuary
doctrine. I do not know how they transpired ; I am
not certain that the question is much of my concern ;
no doubt in the historical sense I could desire that I did
know. I am certain that the spiritual alchemists were
men after the heart of Christ ; I am not less certain
that those who created^symbolical Masonry were the
638
The Secret Church
members of a lower grade ; and when the Quest of
Galahad takes that high prince and king among all
anointed through the veils of transubstantiation into
the Divine Vision, I know that the sanctuary is made
void for him who has so achieved, the curtains are parted,
and it is given him to depart hence, for there is nothing
left to detain him.
IV
THE MTSTERT WHICH IS WITHIN
On the historical side the Secret Church is then the
shadow of an hypothesis at best ; on the spiritual side of
the intellect it is an implicit, but it is that irresistibly;
mystically it is a truth which is not less than obvious,
but it should be understood — and I repeat therefore —
that it is apart from all forms, conventions and instituted
existence. When in our highest moments we conceive
with least unworthiness of the Church on the ideal
plane, we approximate, but still under the reserves of
our own insufficiency, to the Holy Assembly. It is
the unity of arch-natural minds. It is that in which,
by the mediation of the creeds, we confess our beliefs
daily — the communion of saints. If we like to express
it in such words — and they are excellent apart from
their unhappy associations — it is the choir invisible.
It is even like the priesthood of the Graal sanctuary,
as we judge by the romances concerning it ; it does
not ordain or teach ; it fulfils its office sufficiently
because, speaking symbolically, it is " in the foremost
files of time." It is like Saint-Martin — its feet are on
earth and its head is in Heaven.
The Secret Church has said therefore : " Introibo ad
altare Dei" and it has entered and gone in. When it
comes out, in the person of one of its members, it carries
bread and wine, like Melchisedech. The conditions of
its membership correspond to the conditions of finding
639
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the Holy Graal, as described in the German Parsifal.
If it were possible to regard it as an Order, it might be
said that its device is : " Behold, I am with you always,
even unto the consummation of the world." It is the
place in which Mary conceived in her heart before she
conceived in her body. As already indicated, it has
not issued manifestoes, or we should be in a better
position to judge regarding it ; it has not had its docu-
ments abstracted, or we should not have had the Graal
romances extant in their present form. But things
have transpired concerning it, and thus we have the
Characteristics of the Interior Church by Loupoukine,
the Cloud upon the Sanctuary by Eckartshausen, Werner's
Sons of the V alley > the Eucharistic side of Alchemy and
the rumour of the Holy Quest. It gives to those who
can receive it a full answer to the question : " Art thou
He that is to come, or do we look for another ? J! In a
word, the natural Graal is everywhere but the super-
natural Graal is in the Secret Church.
So far as there has been any evidence offered on the
hypothesis concerning it, this has gone entirely astray,
because it has assumed that we are concerned with
some corporate and organised body, whereas we are
concerned only with the course of experience in the
higher consciousness. Now, if there is no such experi-
ence, the claim of the official Church is at once voided.
The presence of the Secret Church is like that of
angels unawares. In the outer courts are those who
are prepared for regeneration, and in the adyta are those
who have attained it : these are the Holy Assembly.
It is the place of those who, after the birth of flesh,
which is the birth of the will of man, have come to be
born of God. It is in the persons of those who are
regenerate that the gates of hell cannot prevail against
the Church. The place of the Holy Assembly is the
place of Eden and Paradise ; it is that whence man
came and whither he returns. It is also that place
from which the Spirit and the Bride say " Come " ;
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The Secret Church
or it is the place of the Waters of Life, with power to
take freely. It is like the still, small voice ; it is heard
only in the midst of the heart's silence, and there is no
written word to show us how its rite is celebrated.
Its work upon things without is a work of harmony,
wherein is neither haste nor violence. There are no
admissions — at least of the ceremonial kind — to the
Holy Assembly, but in the last instance the candidate
inducts himself. There is no sodality, no institution,
no order which throughout the Christian centuries has
worked in such silence. It is for this reason that it
remains an implicit in mystic literature rather than a
formal revelation ; it is not a revelation but an infer-
ence ; when it is not an inference it is an attainment.
It is neither an interference nor a guidance actually ; it
is better described as an influence. It does not come
down ; more correctly it draws up, but it also inheres.
It is the place of those who have become transmuted
and tingeing stones.
The mystery in chief of the Secret Church is that
of Divine communication, of which it has the sanctifying
sacraments ; but, once more, so far as these are typified
symbolically it can have no more efficient and unspotted
outward signs than the bread and wine for oblation.
It is in this sense that it connects more especially with
the Eucharist. Christian temples are oriented to show
that there is a light behind, and by all previous con-
siderations churches with open doors are the thresholds
of the Church which is not entered by doors because
it has not been built with hands. The Secret Church
is the manifest Church glorified and installed in the
spiritual kingdom, as this was first set over the kingdom
of the visible world. It is therefore the withdrawn spirit
of the outward Holy Assembly, and it would be un-
reasonable for those who acknowledge the visible body
to deny that which transcends it. But to speak of a spirit
which thus transcends a body is still to say that, because
the lesser is contained by the greater, the latter is until
641 2 S
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
now not exactly without the former nor apart therefrom,
and its mode of manifestation, in so far as it can be said
to manifest, is not otherwise than from within. There is
no separate incorporation. It has no ambassadors nor
charges d'affaires at any court of the hierarchies, nor does
it send out visible physicians and healers, for it has no
conventional offices either in the interests of things above
or even of those below. If some have spoken of it as
leading the official Church, there is here an imperfection
of expression, because it is speaking after a formal manner
concerning modes which are apart from all whatsoever
that we understand by convention. Without in any
sense representing and much less exhausting the process,
I have indicated that it draws rather than leads, and
if I may attempt one further definition, as the synthesis
of all my statements — echoing and reflecting all — I would
describe the Secret Church as the integration of believers
in the higher consciousness.
THE SECLUDED AND UNKNOWN SANCTUART
It is obvious that the romances of the Graal are
either legendary histories of religion on the external
side, and as such are concerned with the quest of con-
version— that is, Christianity colonising — or they are
spiritual histories with a strong individual element
but a wide field of application on the universal side,
corresponding to the province of mysticism — such as the
legend of the Church in the world and the soul in its
progress. The first class would include the metrical
Joseph of Arimathtza and the Book of the Holy Graal,
while the most notable examples of the second class are
the Longer Prose Perceval and the Quest of Galahad.
The idea of their secret meaning must be held to reside,
as regards the first class, in the claims which they 'put
forward, and, as regards the second, in the special appli-
642
The Secret Church
cation of the stories. In our consideration of certain
successive literatures which came into existence during
the Christian centuries, we have seen that the books
of the Graal do enter into a particular scheme, and they
are the first in time therein. They tell us — now that
the secret words, which were of the essence of the
Mystery of Faith, had passed out of all common know-
ledge ; now that the true succession from Christ had
been resumed into Heaven ; again that the sacred
mysteries were reserved in an inaccessible mountain
from all but the highest sanctity, or alternatively that
the House of Doctrine stood vacant as a testimony to
the external world. There was also the literature of
alchemy, saying that He is truly here but that the way
of His attainment comes only by the revelation which
He gives, and for all else there are only the age-long
processes of Nature. There was further the literature
of Israel in exile, saying : " By the Waters of Babylon "
— yet also to those who could hear it : " Enter into the
nuptial joys of Rabbi Simeon." There was, lastly, as
there is also, the great witness of Masonry, saying :
" Not yet, in quiet lie " — to every heart of aspiration
seeking to build the temple otherwise than in the heart.
And so from age to age the story of substitution con-
tinues, but with a hint everywhere that still there is
known somewhere that which the sign signifies. The
Wardens are withdrawn, but they are alive. There
is a cloud upon the Sanctuary, but the Sanctuary is
within the Church, and other rumours distinguishable
throughout the centuries speak of a Holy Place which
is behind the manifest Altar, of a deeper mystery of
love behind the world of grace — a rumour, a legend, a
voice, an unknown witness testifying concerning a more
Holy Assembly and an Interior and more Secret Church.
So far therefore an attempt has been made to justify
the hypothesis that there were rumours abroad in the
world which entered into houses of romance and account
for the implicits which have been traced in the Graal
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
literature. All that which lay behind the rumour — an
undeclared region, giving forth strange portents under
a cloud of mystery — was apart, and that utterly, from
the connections of romance, and the story-tellers, work-
ing under their proper warrants, went their own way,
incorporating, as we have seen, from all quarters. We
get in this manner the three schools which I mentioned
at the beginning : (a) the school of transition from
folk-lore ; (b) the school of Guiot de Provence ; and
(c) the monastic school. The end of these considerations
is now upon the very threshold, but before I take the
closing it is desirable to set out briefly some possible
hypotheses in divergence and decide how far they have
any claim on our attention. When the alchemists of
old intended more than usually to confuse their various
issues in unversed minds, and to distract the curiosity-
monger regarding that Mystery which has been termed
throughout all Hermetic times the First Matter of the
Philosopher, they had recourse to concealment by
application thereto of almost opprobrious epithets. It
was a vile and unclean matter, a thing of no account
and despised, an object that was found everywhere and
trodden under the feet of the wayfarer. The uninitiated
went astray accordingly in foolish and revolting processes.
I do not know whether a similar subtlety might have
commended itself to the writers of Graal romances-
supposing that there had been a common understanding
between them for the attainment of a specific end-
but having regard to the enormous machinery which was
put in operation to determine the enchantments of
Britain, " the desolation which fell upon Logres " and
the adventurous times, it is natural to look about for
a causation in proportion thereto — for instance, some
event in history ; but nothing emerges in response
except a possible conspiracy in matters of religion.
We will therefore begin by assuming that for what
purpose soever the literature concealed in part but in
part also put forward an attack upon the Roman Church.
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The first observation to make in this connection is that
those who were concerned with the movement out of
which the impeachment originated must have accepted
the sacraments and the body of ecclesiastical procedure.
This is therefore assumed tacitly, as there would be
otherwise no working agreement possible.
Now, seeing that in one case the keeper of the Graal
is supposed to have fallen from righteousness, and that
— obscurely enough in respect of logic in the scheme —
he could only look for healing outside his own House
of Doctrine, one might be disposed at first sight to
conclude that the Graal Church may stand for Latin
Christianity and the Rich Fisherman for its central
seat of authority. He is the Keeper of the Divine
Mysteries, the possessor of the valid forms, but he and
his environment have been laid waste by the spirit of the
world. Alternatively, it might be a confession of apparent
failure in respect of God's work in the world. From
either point of view the literature would be concerned
with the amelioration of the Latin Church by recalling
it to its higher part. The position, however, becomes
involved curiously, and that at once, for the presence
of the Hallows may preserve the king alive, but otherwise
they cannot help him. No recitation of the putative,
all-powerful words can ever relieve his sickness, and
the House of God is therefore — as it long remains — in
mourning. Here also the difficulty of the unasked
question — of that question which seems exclusive in
symbolism — intervenes for our further confusion. What
purpose, in this connection, could it serve the Hereditary
Keeper of the Graal, that an apparent stranger should
visit him and ask the meaning of the Graal and its
pageant ? We remember the question in Masonry
which is one of violence, doing outrage to the law and
the order and voiding the erection of a true temple :
there it is simple in symbolism, and thus transparent
in meaning ; but here is a question which is necessary in
some utterly mystical manner, belonging to the law and
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the order, and one by which the Warden is restored :
it is less intelligible on this hypothesis than are darker
corners of thought. It follows, however this may be,
that there is a heavy cloud on the Sanctuary, and if
the symbolism belongs simply to the official Church,
it has the Words of Life, but is still, after some manner,
inhibited ; it must be challenged before it can speak
and it must communicate before it can be healed. The
Quests are so far external that they involve transit from
place to place, as a pageant passes through a temple ;
but the question is an intellectual research. The heroes
of research offer no light on the subject, because Perceval
at his highest does not ask in the end and the romance
of Galahad confesses to no question. The Didot Perceval
leaves the new Keeper, with all to him belonging, in
final seclusion, where the evidence of things not seen
is put away from the eyes of all, and it is impossible
therefore that the Hidden Sanctuary should represent
an official Church. To express it in another way, the
Son of the Doctrine was received into the House of
the Doctrine and had the great secret imparted to him.
Faintly and far away the Didot Perceval shows how the
aeonian Keeper has waited in the castle of the soul till
the natural man, who is the scion of his house, comes in
and asks the question of the union. The natural man
understands nothing and does not ask till he is driven,
but he is driven at last. As faintly and still further
away, the Conte del Graal tells the same symbolical
story, with many variations ; but as it reaches no term
till a later period in time, when it is simply a reflection
of other texts, and has hence no independent implicits,
there is no call to examine it in this connection. It may
be noted, however, that the prologue, which is regarded
as its latest part, tells of things which exceed experience
— that is to say, evidence — of sins against spiritual life
and of return to the House of the Father, as aspiration
returns to its source. But it is difficult to connect it
with any sanctuary doctrine. The German Parsifal
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tells how the House is always in the world, but that it
is only attainable by great sanctity, which is sufficient
to show that it does not symbolise the institutes of
external religion. It has, however, a strange sacramental
side, which seems to indicate that the Eucharist in its
highest efficacy comes down from Heaven direct. It
therefore incorporates not indeed a distinct motive but
the terms of another school. To conclude concerning
it, it is obvious from the beginning that the Keepers of
Mont Salvatch were a secret order of chivalry, after
the manner of the Templars. The Titurel recites the
building of the Spiritual House in beauty as a Palace of
Art ; and its meaning is that the Mystery of Knowledge
was in the custody of a special election, though there is
nothing to suggest that it was opposed to the official
Church. The Longer Prose Perceval lifts up a different
corner of the veil, telling how one Keeper died unhealed
and that the last Warden of the Mysteries was taken
away, though the Holy Things remained. We have
now only the great and paramount Quest left for con-
sideration, which is that of Galahad, and it tells how
the Warden of the Mysteries, together with the Holy
Things, was removed once and for all, as if the House
of Doctrine were itself nothing and the term of research
everything. The Great Quest was written with the
highest sanctity as its actuating motive, and we can
do no otherwise than accept it as an instance of the
literature at its greatest. It forms with the Longer
Prose Perceval the consummation of the cycle. These
quests are mirrors of spiritual chivalry, mirrors of per-
fection, pageants of the mystic life, and it does not
matter what the legend was prior to their appearance.
They are the teaching of the Church spiritualised, if I
may be pardoned such a term, and they offer in romance
form a presentation of the soul's chronicle.
So far therefore from the Graal sanctuary representing
the Latin or any other external Church, we find that
the mystery of the sanctuary within is written through
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all the romances, though it is in the words of the sanctuary
without and the savour of the external incense is more
noticeable in some quests than in others.
In this light we shall still find the Didot Perceval a
little wanting in meaning and the Conte del Graal too
composite to reflect a full light of intention. As regards
the German cycle, it shows how the great mystery
descends and abides in us. The High History empties
the House of Doctrine and leaves it as a vacant sign
before the face of the world. The Galahad Quest says
that the world was not worthy. Yet in a sense all
this is comparative, constituting the several presenta-
tions and various aspects of that which is one at the
root, for the Secret Church does indeed say : Mysterium
Fidei, and the official Church says : Corpus Domini; but
these two are one.
It will be agreed on these considerations that we
can only contemplate the Church of the Holy Graal
as a mystery of secrecy, but it can be assumed that in
this sense it may either have been hostile to Rome or
at peace in its mind concerning it. In connection with
the first alternative, let us imagine for a moment that
the Welsh or some other Celtic Church was making
through the medium of the romances a last bid for
recognition. If the prevalence of the, Roman Rite
constituted the enchantment and desolation ; if the
questioning of the Wardens of the Mystery, on the
Mystery itself manifested, signified the illumination of
the elect concerning the faith once delivered to the
Celtic saints and now in danger of extinction ; we
should have a design adequate to the machinery, and
should be able to understand the magnitude of the
claims in conjunction with the follies which abound
in the form of its expression, for it seems difficult to
say that, for example, the Sanctuary in Wales had a
wise church built about it. It was chaotic rather than
in confusion, and in respect of its working was almost
a prolonged abuse. The suggestion is otherwise pre-
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posterous ; but British Christianity generally, and its
desire for independence, centralised, by example, in the
crown at the period of Henry II., may be said to account
for a certain complexion sometimes discerned in the
literature in respect of Rome, and to explain why, this
notwithstanding, it is otherwise so catholic at heart. The
speculation at the present time has a certain presumption
in its favour because a section of scholarship is inclined
thereto, but a slight study of the texts must, I think,
dispose of it, once and for all.
The short recension, comprised in the Lesser
Chronicles, tells how a warranted company came west-
ward ; how it abode for many centuries in a Veiled
Sanctuary ; how - the Quest for this Sanctuary was
instituted ; how it failed in the first instance, but was
achieved subsequently ; how the secrets of the Sanctuary
were learned ; how he who learned them remained
within the Sanctuary, and there is no story afterwards.
The metrical romance of De Borron and the Lesser Holy
Graal are not a legend concerning the conversion of
England, but the prolegomena thereto. They leave
the real intention doubtful outside the bare fact that
something would be brought into Britain which was
unknown to the Church at large, for the canonical
apostles were not present when his great mission was
conferred on Joseph by Christ. There is nothing on
the mere surface to show that any priesthood followed
the possession of the Graal Vessel or the knowledge of
the Secret Words. Yet these are Eucharistic ; accord-
ing to the Lesser Holy Graal they are a formula of con-
secration ; and in a sense Joseph must have been
ordained, because it is obvious that at need he could
recite the words effectually. It is certain, moreover,
that Joseph and his company carried no official priests
westward. A great lacuna follows, and then comes
the Early Merlin, showing that the Secret Sanctuary is
in Britain, that a firebrand prophet is going about in
the land, carrying the warrants of the Graal, and is
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bent upon fulfilling prophecy by instituting the Third
Table for the completion of the Graal Trinity. \ There
are no claims put forward regarding the sanctuary,
and the same statement holds for the Didot Perceval.
It remains that the Lesser Chronicles generally intimate
the existence of a particular Eucharistic knowledge,
but not of a Church demanding recognition thereon.
As secrecy is the primary seal, it is obvious that the
Graal Church is not the Church in Britain, nor do the
texts contain any counter-picture, object, or character
which might by possibility correspond to the official
Church apart from that notion of enchantment which,
in the absence of any warrant, it is arbitrary to explain
along these lines. For example, it would be madness to
suggest that Moses, who was interned in secrecy, repre-
sents the Latin Church in apostasy or rejection. It is
obvious, in fine, that Robert de Borron was acquainted
with no tradition which connected Joseph of Arimathsea
with Glastonbury or even with Britain. In the poem, he
remains where he was or returns to Syria, as Moses the
Law-giver went up the holy mountain.
The Greater Chronicles bear the same witness, but
the evidence of transubstantiation and other matters of
doctrine indicate that the major texts are typically and
militantly Roman. The long recension tells how the
same company, strangely extended, arrived in Britain
and there established, in the person of Joseph II., the
beginnings of a supreme orthodoxy, so that nothing
which came after in the name of the Gospel could
abide in competition therewith ; how the prophet and
enchanter Merlin carried a strange warrant to connect
his work with the Mystery of the Holy Graal ; how he
possessed from the beginning of his symbol the power
to promise Blaise that he should be united with the
secret assembly ; how the Castle of the Graal, though
not altogether hidden from the world, was encompassed
with perils and difficulties, which notwithstanding
there were wars or the rumour of wars about it. The
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Book of the Holy Graal narrates the conversion of Britain
by those who carried the license of super-apostolical
succession, the design of which may have been pan-
Britannic, or conceivably the implicit of a plan of
campaign against papal claims over Britain. It is at
least the legend par excellence which, if any, would be
regarded as devised in this interest ; and it would stand
alone as such among the Anglo-Norman texts. The
colonisation, whatever its design, conquered all Britain
in all publicity. When however the later Merlin texts
enter the field, everything has passed into seclusion, and
the prophet's personation of the character of messenger
does not carry public knowledge concerning the Graal
further than an echoing rumour. Outside the sacro-
saintly character of ordinary Church-practice, the texts
offer no ecclesiastical element but the implications
which are resident in the notion of the adventurous
times and the preparation at the royal court for the
Quest of the Sacred Vessel, the term of which is to
break up the Round Table. The intermediate prose
Lancelot follows the Merlin texts, working for the same
end, and we are already at a far distance from the letter
and spirit of the Book of the Holy Graal. In the Longer
Prose Perceval the term is to strip the sanctuary, but
it remains a consecrated place, and those who enter
therein become thereafter men of holy lives and saints
of the official Church. The Quest of Galahad offers
in the term thereof the instance of a Keeper who
is dispossessed without any intimation of his end. It
may be said that he is treated with something almost
approaching contumely. There is an apparent equiva-
lent of an expulsion of the profane in that command
for those to withdraw who are not in the Quest of the
Graal. But behind this. and behind the unnamed yet
acknowledged warrant of the Knights from Gaul, Ireland
and Denmark, there is some mystery concealed deeply ;
the latter took away from their high experience the
memory of a glorious vision which could well serve as the
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basis of a tradition thereafter in various parts of the
world ; but they had not received communication of the
last secrets. The hidden life of the Holy Graal during the
Arthurian period seems next after one the most wonderful
of all hidden lives. What could King Pelles, with
whom the Graal had abode for years, and it may be for
centuries, whose daughter had also borne it through
all the secret rites from her childhood, what could he
learn from the Quest ?
I conclude therefore as regards the Greater Chronicles
that they offer in one text, which is one of the latest,
a certain aggrandisement of British ecclesiastical tradi-
tion by the incorporation of a rumour which belonged
in its root-matter to a different concern totally ; but
the remaining branches have little part in the scheme.
The Graal Church is held in secrecy and mystery, and
when the Quest of Galahad certifies that a certain Joseph,
not otherwise particularised, was the first bishop of
Christendom, there is no longer any consequence in-
volved in the ecclesiastical order.
In the German cycle the Graal has nothing to do
with any conversion legend and nothing to do with
Britain ; that country is not entered at all in the
Parsifal. The assumption of a particular concern in
the aspirations or ambitions of the House of Anjou is
an irresistible inference from that portion which contains
the Angevin elements ; but it is accidental and not
essential to the design of the poem, and is not its
inspiration but its burden. The poem is to be judged
wholly by other standards.
It must, I think, be concluded from this brief and
literal schedule that, except by a bare possibility in a
single sporadic instance, we are not dealing in the
Graal literature with an ecclesiastical conspiracy for the
furtherance of any independence in matters of religion ;
the scheme of the whole mystery is opposed to such
a supposition. It seems impossible to affirm that the
Graal writers were working a similar scheme under a
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common agreement, as if all were imbued by a pan-
Britannic fever, or were the concealed disciples of an
obscure sect in religion. There are few consecutive
documents which offer so little trace of a concerted
effort. Some writers manifest a very high purpose and
some no purpose at all, beyond the true intent which is
all for our delight in story-telling. Otherwise than by
simple predilection, we shall never understand why
these chose for their subject a Mystery like that of the
Graal. But the rumours and implicits run through all
the texts, as an echo perpetuated, and in their several
degrees the stories are plain concerning them. Even
the 'Conte del Graal enshrines them after its own
manner, in spite of a piecemeal tradition. Apart
from this text, the Didot Perceval tells a plain story
by interning the Warden-in-chief, with the Hallows,
in that place which it never names ; but it knows
nothing of the House made void. The German Par-
sifal tells a plain story by leaving the great chivalry
in the great Temple, all things completed and all
things as they were at the beginning. Again there is
nothing made void. The removal of the Mystery in
the Titurel and the transport of the Sacred House can-
not signify more than a change of imputed location and a
further withdrawal. The Longer Prose Perceval tells a
plain story, but it leaves the voided Castle as a public
sign to the nations, taking the Keeper and the Hallows
into that great distance which is not in time or place.
The Quest of Galahad, in fine, tells a plain story also
of the voided House and its vacated offices, but it has
byways of allusion from which the infinite opens.
Now, the mystery which covers the sanctuary is never
drawn away in the Lesser Chronicles. We know only
that the weight of many centuries presses heavily upon
the Keeper. We infer that the hermit, Blaise, was
taken into the choirs of heaven according to the promise
of Merlin, and is, therefore, in la joie -perdurable. But
we know not of any messenger who has relieved Perceval ;
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so, therefore, in eternal virginity and in utter loneliness
he is waiting till the world shall be worthy. His place
is not known ; he does not come out therefrom ; and
there is none that goes in.
But in the Greater Chronicles there is another version
of his legend which says very surely, although by impli-
cation only, that the Didot Perceval is not the whole
story, and therein indeed Perceval is taken away, for
the Red Cross ship carries him, as the dark barge bears
King Arthur. This story stands apart almost from
everything and is very difficult to account for, since all
things fail therein. The king dies, the question is not
asked, the Hallows are parted from one another, the
Castle of Souls and the Gate of Paradise are left utterly
vacant, as a sign of wrath to the centuries, and the hands
of Perceval are empty as he passes into the unseen. We
learn only that he goes through a golden distance and
that he knows that which awaits him.
I have said that there are wars and rumours of wars
about Corbenic in the Galahad Quest, yet is it found
by grace only, or special license, and it is a house of
terrors and of marvels. Under these reserves, it is a
house of many visitations, nor is it therefore so utterly
unknown as is that of the Lesser Chronicles. Its build-
ing is described at large, as is that of the Temple in the
Titurel, and if its location remains a mystery we are
not without some materials for reconstructing its broad
environment.
We have now made a circuitous journey and we
return to our starting-point, being the evidences of
a concealed claim, presupposing its proper custodians
working within the Church and in no sort setting it
aside. We have found — as I at least should have expected
to find antecedently — the rationale of that Mystery of
Faith which tells us that the Lamb was slain from the
foundation of the world. The makers of the Anglo-
Norman Graal cycle had heard in some undeclared
manner of the secret tradition, and they were so far
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properly informed that they allocated it to the Holy
Eucharist, some of them reflecting it as secret words
used in consecrating the elements. They knew also
that it was a mystery of orthodox tradition and therefore
some others perhaps reflected it as super-apostolical
succession, but this particular rumour fell speedily out of
sight. The writers did not register their remembrance
of the Epidesis clause in a Celtic liturgy ; they never
dreamed of a pan-Britannic Church, though one text
may have reflected hostility to the executive of Rome.
Nothing could be less in correspondence with such
an ambition than their conception of a Mystery of
Grace which was at no time intended to prevail
in public. Notwithstanding a certain quasi-publicity
during the adventurous times, to the end it remained
a mystery. There is no suggestion that any sect,
company, or institution was intended to replace some
public institution, church, company, or sect. Amidst
all the diadems and emblazonments of the great, won-
derful literature, its concern at the highest emerges
in the uttermost clearness, being a tradition of the
panis vivus in its deeper understanding. The Mass
went on for ever in the lands and the islands ; but
in a place apart and out of all declaration there was
a Secret Ark of Alliance, and those who could be
present at its service beheld, in a heart of revelation,
how Christ was manifested in the heart and administered
His own Eucharist, as He did at the Last Supper. There
is no other message put forward by the still more secret
literatures, for these testify that he who desires to be
dissolved shall be actually with Christ — but whether in
passing through literal or mystical death is a great
question. Every document comprised in the Lesser
and Greater Chronicles may be regarded as beginning
in sanctity and culminating in greater sanctity, which
term is to be understood in the sense of the Catholic
Church. In the last resource, even Secret Words and
super-apostolical succession" mean only the mind of the
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Church entering into its higher part, and all the com-
panies of epopts are joined therein in a common act of
experience. The official Church at its greatest is not
apart really from the Secret Church, and the one is
wounded in the other, nor will they be disjoined in
their healing. The Graal is the sacred legend of the
Eucharist, but as behind its Castle of Souls there was
a hidden Paradise, so, as a Graal which is behind the
Holy Graal, there is an inward or transcendent sense of
the entire Mystery.
The first lesson which we must put to heart from
these considerations is one of great caution in applying
the actual or possible implicits of the Graal literature.
We may suggest in the exercise of our ingenuity that
Logres stands for the colonies of Christianity, as the
lesser stands for the greater, but we shall not be
counselled wisely if we think that the enchantment of
Logres was the prevalence of the official Churches,
whether these were Roman or Welsh. We may say
that the King's wounding sometimes signified the
dereliction of the Great Experiment in the isolation
of its concealment ; but the King's healing — when it
happens that he is healed — was not a dream of some
triumph of doctrine over other doctrines in the world
at large. We may say that the supersanctified Mystery
of Faith located in the House of Doctrine is like the
Supernal Sephiroth of Kabalism separated from the
Sephiroth below by the serpent spirit of the world ;
but if we chance to be Kabalists we shall remember
that Daath remains as a channel of indirect communica-
tion without break or intermission. We must not say
that the removal of the Great Palladium signifies the
complete denudation of the official Church, but we
may " remember of this unstable world " and the spirit
thereof. When we say that the House of Doctrine is
voided, we must not mean that the official Church
has ceased to be holy in its teaching, or that the King
of Castle Mortal is the Judas spirit of Rome. Seeing
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that the Graal Castle is the House of the Great Experi-
ment and that King Fisherman is the custodian of the
hidden knowledge concerning it, we may, however,
regard the higher Perceval as the mystic spirit and the
chivalry of sanctity. The question that he ought to
have asked concerned the Greater Office of the Eucharist.
This would have caused the Mystery to manifest. His
failure brought the House of Sanctity into desolation,
because there was no heir found to carry on the great
tradition. But when the Keeper of the Hallows perished
and the Holy Place fell to the enemies thereof, the
tradition did not die, and in the end it was restored
thereto. The supplement to these things is the complete
agreement in the romances with all church doctrine
and practice, from the least even to the greatest. They
have, at the same time, their own insufficiencies, and it
is for this reason that they lend themselves readily to
misconstruction. When rumours came into the hands,
let us say, of some mere neophyte, as it might be Guiot
de Provence, we can understand his misconception and
confusion, including why he went further, as, for
example, to the Chronicles of Anjou ; in other words,
to the events of the outside world for the explanation
of that which happened only in the secret world of
initiation. He was in the position of some who at this
day go to " those holy fields " for living evidence con-
cerning Him " who brought life and immortality to
light." We can understand also that various successive
translators and independent tellers of the legend did
also, after their own fashion, go further astray, losing
all touch with the centre, till the official Church, at once
jealous and zealous, stepped in and took over the dis-
membered body of the legend, putting it to its own
use. It discerned something which belonged properly
to itself, collected it accordingly out of the debris of
romance-literature and put it again into romance. Of
such is the Quest of Galahad and of such is the Longer
Prose Perceval. The Mystery, qua Mystery of Experience
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in transcendence, was reflected from scoriated glass to
scoriated glass, giving us indeed here and there high
intimations of the original, but not a true likeness, so
that we are constrained, like Guiot, to look elsewhere for a
fuller explanation, not indeed in Chronicles of Anjou, but
in unofficial, fragmentary and elusive traces of the true
legitimacy in religion which can be excavated by those
who seek them from the tombs of other dead literatures.
It is after this manner that we reach by insensible
stages that point at which the imperfect testimonies
of romance are transferred altogether in our minds, by
the light shining from those higher fields of consciousness
in the mystery of religion ; and allowing them to dissolve
for a moment, but in consequence setting aside the
literature on its romantic side, there emerge the grades
of the Graal subject in the harmony of all quests equally
with all histories. The inward man, as I have said, is
the wounded Keeper, and he is indeed in the Castle
of Souls, which is the Graal Castle, as it is also Eden,
Paradise and the Body of Man. That is to say, it is
the Earthly Paradise, but behind it there is another
Eden. The Keeper has been (a) wounded for im-
memorial sin ; (b) he is infirm by reason of his long
exile ; (c) he has become maimed for some obscure
profanation of the mysteries, in the unsanctified warfare
of this world ; or (ct) he suffers from the failure to ask
one little question. This question is : Who is served
of the Graal ? — as of those who attain the Divine Life
even in the body of them. What part is the Lord ?
Art thou He that is to come ? Who goeth into the
Mountain of the Lord ? The answer to this last is :
The innocent of hands and clean of heart. The Keeper
is in fine healed and set free by those who come from
without — by Perceval and Galahad, who lay down
their arms in a state of purity. Gawain cannot help
him, because he is the natural man unconverted, and the
day of Sir Bors is not yet. After the former Keeper's
healing, he sometimes remains with the new Keeper,
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his successor, whom he has incorporated into the
mysteries, and this represents one stage of the progress ;
in others he passes away and is forgotten. The explana-
tion in either case is that the bondage, the desolation,
the lapse of the immortal spirit into earthly life is here
shadowed forth, in which state he can only be helped
from without — that is to say, by his mortal half, his
external nature ; and his great deliverance is in such a
transfiguration that the one is succeeded by the other
or the two are joined henceforth. Hereof is the
tradition of a secret sanctuary, and its application may
be found by those who will take out the details, seeing
that it prevails through all the quests. There will be
no need to say, even to the unversed student, that in
the wilderness of this mortal life that which maintains
the spirit is that which is involved by the higher under-
standing of the Holy Graal. But at the same time it is
also a Feeding Dish, a Dish of Plenty, because the life
of the body comes from the same source. When the
natural man undertakes the great quest, all the high
kingdoms of this world, which cannot as such have any
part therein, look for the ends of everything. It is the
quest for that which is real, wherein enchantments
dissolve and the times of adventure are also set over.
The enchantments are in the natural world, and so
again are the adventures, but the unspelling quest is in
the world of soul. The witness of this doctrine has
been always in the world and therein it has been always
secret. The realisation of it is the Shekinah restored
to the Sanctuary ; when it is overshadowed there is a
Cloud on the Sanctuary. It is the story of the individual
man passing into the concealment of the interior and
secret life, but carrying with him his warrants and his
high insignia. In a word, it is that doctrine the realisa-
tion of which in the consciousness I have called, under
all reserves and for want of a better term, the Secret
Church, even the Holy Assembly — I should say rather,
the cohort of just men made perfect.
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The Graal literature is not only one of growth, with
a great mixture of elements from the standpoint of
folk-lore and official scholarship, but it is such also from
the ecclesiastical and mystical standpoint. Many lights
of the past thereon have proved illusory — as, for example,-
the western manifestation of Manichaean elements ; but
the Hidden Church of the Holy Graal is the reasonable
deduction drawn out of certain implied claims which,
are supported by identical inferences from independent
evidence, and they do not signify that the rumours with
which we are now so familiar were more than rumours
or the romances more than romances, except in so far
as some of them embody the high life of sanctity mani-
fested in that vehicle. We have seen that the Secret
Church is a term of exaggeration, but it is difficult to
characterise exactly by any formal title the Holy School
which perpetuated the mystery of the Great Experiment.
In that Experiment lies the hope of Western Mysticism,
but it does not follow from this statement that I hold
a brief for Eckartshausen or for others who in the past
have put forward on their own basis the claim of a
Secret Church up to the point that they have conceived
thereof. The shadows of the Great Experiment which
are found in the Graal literature bear witness to that
Quest, to the Mystery of Initiation and advancement
contained therein, but we know otherwise concerning
it. It is in this sense that against all the wonders of a
world no longer realised, the lost legends of folk-lore,
the putative liturgies which have vanished, the implicits
in the villainous transactions of Henry II., the power —
possibly unscrupulous — behind the fidelity to death of
St. Thomas a Becket, the sectarian ravings concerning
Protestant succession from apostolic times, the great
dream of undemonstrable archaic heresy behind the
Knights Templars, and the other visions -per omnia
scecula sceculorum^ I set the reasonable and veridic inti-
mation of a secret tradition in Catholic experience, the
equivalents of which are the super-valid Eucharistic Rite
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and the direct succession from Christ. If in fine it be
said that I have " sat and played with similes," my
rejoinder is that they have not been " loose types of
things in all degrees," but rather consanguinities of
the spirit in the following of one quest — we also — unto
this last — seeking le moyen de ^arvenir.
VI
THE TRADITION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE
AND OTHER TRACES OF A HIGHER MIND
OF THE CHURCH
I have set aside in succession every school of tradition
in Christian times as an exclusive mouthpiece of the
tradition in its root-matter ; the most catholic of all
is the literature of spiritual alchemy, and it occupies a
very high place, being especially a strong contrast to the
scheme of symbolical Masonry, which is a legend of
loss only. I think that the alchemists had the matter
of the whole work, by which I mean the Scriptural
Mystery of being born again of water and the Holy
Spirit, and the fact — if I am right in the fact — that they
did not give under their particular veils an accredited
exposition of the Great Experiment, according to the
canons of the Art and the tradition which reposed in its
Wardens, is positive proof to myself that it was never
put into official language. I am not less certain that
Eckartshausen approximated only, and that if he had
been fully qualified he would have dwelt more expressly
upon the Eucharist. Loupoukine at his highest is an
interesting and beloved ghost expressing a remote annunci-
ation dictated perhaps by a strong sentiment rather than
a certain knowledge in the heart or even in the head.
We remain therefore with all the counters in our hands,
and perhaps some day they will be rearranged in yet
another manner as the time approaches when nibil tarn
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occultum erit quod non reveldbitur. Meanwhile, it seems
not unreasonable to suppose that several minds will
have raised already the question whether there are no
traces in the annals of the Church itself. On the
assurance that the Great Experiment does not set the
Church aside, surely outside the official records and
first-hand memorials of sanctity there may be some
vestiges of the secret school in the East or the West.
When Origen denied in all truth and sincerity that
Christian doctrine was a secret system, he made haste
to determine the subsistence of an esoteric part which
was not declared to the multitude, and he justified it not
only by a reference to the more secret side of Pytha-
gorean teaching, but by the secrecy attaching to all
the Mysteries. The question therefore arises whether
the discipline, arcani, which is usually referred to the
Eucharist, because to all else it must be foreign, may
not be imbedded in that tradition of St. John the
Divine of which we have traces certainly. I set aside
without any hesitation the obvious objection that the
Fourth Gospel has no Eucharistic memorial, and its
inference, that for St. John less than for the other
evangelists did the flesh profit anything. The great
contention of the Gospel is that the Word became flesh,
and if it fails to recite the high office and ceremonial
of the Last Supper, it announces in the words of the
Master (a) that this is a " meat which endureth unto
everlasting life ; " (£) that Christ is " the living bread
which came down from heaven ; " and (c) that " he that
eateth thereof shall live for ever." In other words,
the doctrine concerning the communication of Divine
Substance is taught more explicitly by St. John than
by the rest of the evangelists.
The traditions concerning the beloved disciple are
numerous in the Christian Church, and on the thau-
maturgic side they issue from the evasive intimation of
his gospel that he was to remain on earth until the
Second Coming of the Saviour. From his ordeal of
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martyrdom he therefore came forth alive, according to
his legend, and so he remained, in the opinion of
St. Augustine, resting as one asleep in his grave at
Ephesus. St. Cyril also testifies that he:- never died.
But it is Ephrem, I believe, who offers an explicit account
of St. John's interment by his own will at the hands
of his disciple, after giving them the last instructions
on the mysteries of faith. The grave was dug in his
presence ; he entered therein ; it was sealed by the
disciples, who returned as commanded on the day
following, opened the sepulchre and found only the
grave-clothes. This story represents an alternative
legend of St. John's translation to heaven in the flesh
of his body. From the place where he had rested so
briefly an oil or manna was collected and was used for
healing diseases.
That which did actually survive was the tradition of
his secret knowledge, the implicit of which is that he
who reposed on the breast of his Master did not arise
and go forth without an intimate participation in the
Mysteries of the Sacred Heart. Again, the tradition
has many forms ; and seeing that St. Isidore of Seville
in the sixth century tells how St. John not only broke
and rejoined certain precious stones but converted the
branches of a tree into golden boughs and changed
pebbles into jewels, reconverting both at the end ;
seeing also that Adam de St. Victor commemorated
one of these miracles in a prose of his period :
" Cum gemmarum partes fractas
Solidasset," &c.—
it is not surprising that alchemists who had heard of
these things adopted the belief that he was a great
master of metallic transmutation — by which I speak of
the material side and not of the spiritual work.
There is no need to say that this is fantasy of its period,
and it is cited only as such. The legends and inventions
— but it should be understood that there are many
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
others — are the mere rumours, and so being are less
even than intimations, concerning a traditional influence
exercised by St. John, of which, as I have said, there are
traces. But it has proved impossible in the past for
researches into a concealed side of Christian doctrine
to be actuated by another expectation than the dis-
covery of obscure heresy, and it is important that we
on our part should again make it plain to ourselves that
there is nothing to our purpose in any devious ways of
doctrinal thought, nor do those who pursue them, under
the banner of the Graal and its quest, carry any
antecedent warrant in the likelihood of things. It is
said, for example, that there is a chain of evidence
passing through Spain and the Knights Templars to
St. John the Divine, so onward to the Essenes, after
whom there is the further East. This is the pleasing
fable of a few who look to India as the asylum-in-chief of
all the veridic mysteries ; but it has been found more
convenient to state the fact of the evidence than to
produce it. Much further back in the past the Abbe
Gregoire affirmed that our Saviour placed His disciples
under the authority of St. John, who never quitted the
East and from whom certain secret teachings were handed
on to his successors, the Johannine Christians, leading
after many centuries to the institution of the Templars.
Again, the evidence is wanting in respect of the last
statement. The general hypothesis has found some
favour with the critics of the Graal literature, and
Simrock in particular, as we have seen, put forward
the tradition of the Sacred Vessel as the root-matter of
alleged Templar secrets. He also suggested a connection
between the chivalry and the Essenes as the repositories
of a concealed science confided by Jesus to His disciples
and, in fine, by them communicated to Templar priests.
We hear otherwise of another unbroken chain of tradi-
tion hallowed by age, an esoteric oral tradition, revealing
" the sacred lore of primaeval times," intimations concern-
ing which are to be found in the Johannine Apocalypse.
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The Secret Church
Some have referred it to the antecedents of the Anti-
christ myth, to which allusions are supposed in one of
St. Paul's epistles ; but there is a wider horizon within
which the whole subject calls to be regarded anew.
Several of the speculative directions in which light has
been sought thereon are difficult and — so long as we do
not exaggerate the evidential possibilities — unnecessary
to set aside. The Essenian consanguinities suggest
themselves in connection with that which could have
been only a contemplative school, the possible repository
of the mystic experience which in early times lay behind
external Christianity. Thebaid solitaries, children of
the valley, so-called penitents of the desert, Eckarts-
hausen, Lopoukine, sons of the Resurrection, and
others too many for simple recitation here, are offered
to the mind in their order as a possible channel of
tradition from age into age. We can only say in our
restraint that as there were so many sects with variations
in doctrine, it is not unreasonable to suppose that there
may have been one in seclusion having a difference,
by the way of extension, concerning that spiritual
practice which is called the science of the saints.
When I have spoken of the Johannine tradition in
previous sections, I must not be understood as referring
to a specific external community, such as that which
has been popularly described in the past as Johannine
Christians. The information concerning them, and
reproduced by one writer from another, is based upon
exceedingly imperfect research, but among some of my
readers, who have not entered these paths, it may remain
in some vague sense. It supposed an obscure sect which
we are enabled to separate at once from all that we
should ourselves understand by a connection with the
disciple whom Jesus loved. Their patriarchs or pontiffs
are said to have assumed the title of Christ, as Parsifal,
with a higher warrant, took that of Presbyter Johannes ;
but the Christ of their spurious legend is neither King nor
Lord, and with an irony all unconscious he is disqualified
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"The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
from the beginning by their own tinkered gospel, which
substitutes simple illegitimacy for the virginal and
supernatural conception of the Holy Canon. Virus of
this kind suggests inoculation from the Sepher Toldosh
Jeshu rather than from any Christian — as, for example, a
Gnostic — sect.
It must be confessed that the traditional sources con-
cerning St. John are chiefly the apocryphal texts, and they
lie, one and all, under the suspicion of heresy. Leucius—
sometimes called pseudo-Luke — who is said to have been
a disciple of Marcion, wrote, among other apocrypha,
the Acts of John, the particulars of which claim to
be drawn from the apostle himself. Now there is, I
suppose, no question that fabulatores famosi of this kind
were not unlike Master Blihis ; if for some things they
depended on their invention, they drew much more
from floating tradition, and it is obvious on every con-
sideration that round no evangelist and no apostle were
legends so likely to collect as the apocalyptic seer of
Patmos. We shall therefore deal cautiously with the
criticism which suggests that fathers of the Church like
Tertullian drew their mythical accounts of St. John
from heretical texts, for it is equally and more likely that
the two schools drew from a source in common. The
perpetual virginity of St. John, which entitled his body
to translation or assumption, on the ground that virginity
is not subject to death, is a case in point. The Catholic
Church did not derive the counsels of perfection from
Encratites or Manichees, and St. Jerome, who tells this
story, would not owe it to pseudo-Luke, though Abdias
— a very different narrator — in all probability did.
Speaking generally of the Johannine traditions, these
represent the apostle as a saint of contemplation who
transmitted directly from Christ, and as it is clear from
his own gospel that he regarded the Eucharist, inter-
preted after a spiritual manner, as the condition of
Divine Vision, we shall be antecedently prepared for the
fact that there is an Eucharistic tradition concerning
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him. It is said that when preparing for translation he
took bread, blessed, broke it and gave it to his disciples,
exactly after the manner of his Master, but what he
asked with uplifted eyes was that each of the brethren
might be worthy of the Eucharist of the Lord and that,
in such case, his portion might be also with theirs. It
does not signify that, according to orthodox canons, this
comes from a dubious source in doctrine ; the Eucharistic
connection was not devised by that source, and — though
it scarcely signifies for my purpose — I suppose — and it
is interesting to note — that herein is the first recorded
instance of communion in one kind.
The last asylum of St. John was Ephesus, which was
a great house of theosophical speculations, and though
the pivot and centre of the fourth gospel is that the
Word was made flesh, that composite and wonderful text
bears all the marks of being written in a Gnostic atmos-
phere. From that which it was intended to denounce,
it has been thought to derive something in the higher
part of the old eclectic dream, and as the personal influ-
ence of the writer must have been great, so also it is
reasonable to think that it did not pass with him utterly
away. The notion that he communicated something,
and that this something remained, is so recurring, and
amidst so many divided interests, that it is hard to
reject it as a fiction ; it is hard even to say that no Knight
Templar sojourning in the East did never, in late
centuries, hear strange tidings. Apart from this last,
too curious dream, it will be seen that here is slender
ground on which to affirm that the Secret Tradition
connected more closely with the Church side of Chris-
tianity at a Johannine point of contact ; but it is good
to remember that not only has the last word not been
said on the subject, but that we have listened here and
there only to a strange rumour. I conclude that he
who reported the deepest and most sacramental words
which are on record from the mouth of Christ : " My
flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed " is our
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first historical witness to the Eucharistic side of the
Secret Tradition in Christian times. There are strange
indications of sources behind the Gospel according to
St. John. Behind the memorials of the Gnosis there are
also indications of a stage when there was no separation
as yet of orthodox and heretical schools, but rather an
union in the highest direct experience, as if mysteries
were celebrated, and at a stage of these there was the
presence of the Master. But the presence of the Master
was the term of experience in the Graal. I leave there-
fore the Johannine tradition, its possible perpetuation all
secretly within the Church and its possible westward
transition, as a quest so far unfinished for want of
materials.
VII
THE CONCLUSION OF THIS HOLT QUEST
And now, seeing that the end of all is upon the very
threshold, that the keepers of the paths of quest have
sounded the horns for our retirement, and that the hour
has also struck when we must turn down the glass of
vision, it remains as a last duty to gather up certain
threads which have been left under a covenant to recur,
and these in their turn involve other considerations
which must be treated shortly. The result of necessity
is an attempt to codify things which, for the most part,
are detached and even disjointed, yet some of them will
be found to overlap under any mode of grouping.
Preliminary and General. — Setting aside its sacramental
part, the literature, as literature, is Celtic in its elements
and atmosphere ; but this is the body and the environ-
ment in which the spirit of the mystery reposes. The
Graal itself is in the root a reliquary legend. This
legend was taken over and connected with rumours of
secret doctrine concerning the Eucharist and the priest-
hood, being part of a tradition handed down within the
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The Secret Church
Church, but unconsciously to the Church at large. It
passed into romance and incorporated many folk-lore
elements which seemed adaptable to its purpose. They
are naturally its hindrance. In the hands of the
Northern French writers, it got further away from the
Celtic element as it drew towards its term. We cannot
therefore explain the French cycles and much less the
German Graal literature by means of the Celtic Church.
The secret doctrine reflected into the literature abode
in a secret school. Out of this school — but not in an
official sense — there developed at later periods spiritual
alchemy, symbolical craft Masonry, certain Rosicrucian
institutions and certain Christian high grades of Masonic
complexion, as successive veils. It was a school of
Christian mystics, and it was Latin for a long time on its
external side. It is of necessity catholic at heart. The
doctrine concerning it is that there are High Princes of
the Spirit whose experiences surpass not only those of
devout souls but of many of the great saints. Their
time was not " about half-an-hour," but an experience
in perpetuity. The school said that the way of the
Church was the true way and not a good one only, but
also that the heights are still the heights. It comes
about thus that the message of the Secret Words and the
Super-Apostolical Succession is that until we enter the
paths of sanctity and reach a defined term therein, we
have only the shadow of the real things ; but that
shadow is a sacred reflection. On the surface the claim
concerning them sounds like a word written against the
Church, but it is really a call to go forward. Those
who are satisfied with the literal sense of sacred things
are not defrauded thereby, but receive ministry therein.
Yet the second sense remains, which is brought from
very far away, because it draws from the sanctuary of
the soul. Where there is no consciousness of this sense,
and of the deep implicits of doctrine, the Graal is said
to be removed, yet all things remain and are waiting
to manifest. The mystery which the school celebrated
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
corresponded, as I have said, to a Mass of the Beatific
Vision. It is obvious that this was celebrated by the
Hermit in the Book of the Holy Graal. He carried its
signs on his person ; but they Were not the badge,
symbol, or token of an instituted Order. The prologue
to this book is the nearest that we are likely to get to the
expressed side of the mystery. The event in history
which is parallel to the removal of the Graal is the
entrance of the spirit of the world into the instituted
House of Doctrine. The Mass of the Graal is recover-
able, but it is understood that it is celebrated only in
the Secret Church and that Church is within. When the
priest enters the Sanctuary he returns into himself by
contemplation and approaches the altar which is within.
He says : Introibo. When he utters the words which are
spirit and life, the Lord Christ comes down and com-
municates to him in the heart ; or, alternatively, he is
taken up into the Third Heaven and enjoys the dilucid
contemplation. But I do not put it in this way because
I am satisfied with the expression : only we must have
some expression.
The Veil of the Eucharist. — It has been said that,
as the supreme mystery of the Christian Church, the
Eucharist was the last ceremony of initiation and con-
stituted the final enlightenment of the neophyte. The
terms of expression may here be exaggerated, but those
who were stewards of the Christian Mystery had in many
cases received the Mysteries of the Gentiles and may
have adapted some of their procedure. The rumour
which came into romance — and this in the natural
manner that official religion permeated romance every-
where— was a mystery of the Eucharist, and in the minds
of external piety it translated itself into memorials of
the Divine Body and the Precious Blood. It would be
idle to suggest that any higher school of religion was
concerned with the veneration of relics. The desire
was to behold in the Eucharist that which the faithful
believed to repose in the Eucharist. Beyond the know-
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ledge of the outside world there is another knowledge,
but it abides in concealed sources which are outside all
reach of the senses, and in simple Eucharistic terms it
is called the communication of Christ. In the deeper
speculation behind the E-piclesis clause, it is the Descent
of the Comforter within. The missing events and
motives behind Super-Apostolical Succession are the
Great Event and the Divine Reason. He who has
performed the one rigorously scientific experiment and
has opened the Holy Place does go in and celebrate his
Mass in virtue of a warrant which is not necessarily that
of the official priesthood, but it does not set it aside or
compete therewith. I say that this interpretation re-
mains donee de medio fiat, but it will not be taken out of
the way. Herein is the experiment which I believe to
be performed even now in the world, because the great
mysteries of experience do not die. I have found that
the Graal romances in their proper understanding — but
chiefly because of their implicits — are a great introduc-
tion to the whole great subject. They testify after
many ways. The Graal is a guide of the distressed in
the Lesser Chronicles. They represent that Mystery
which is implied in the Hidden Voice of Christ and of
the Holy Spirit. Their Secret Words were words of
power, because that which rules above rules also below.
As such the Lesser Chronicles did not derive from
F£camp, which — like the Greater Chronicles — put
forward the wonder-side of transubstantiation. But the
Book of the Holy Graal, which cuts short the discourse
between Christ and Joseph in the tower and so suppresses
all reference to the communication of Secret Words,
can derive no more than a reflection from this source,
and even that little may be, alternatively, drawn from
general tradition. I should state in this connection
that the insufficiency of transubstantiation is on the
external side mainly ; on the spiritual side the arch-
natural body is communicated to the human body and
the Divine Life to the human spiritual part. This is
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
the deeper aspect not only of the Blessed Sacrament but
of the Bowl of Plenty. Every text of the French cycles
is confused and discounselled by this extraneous element,
for which reason I have called it foreign, for example,
to the Romance of Lancelot. I do not mean that the
feeding properties are never introduced therein, but that
the writer was dubious as to their proper place and
ministry. The meats and the spicery now follow the
dove — as in the case of Lancelot's visit to the Castle and
that of Sir Bors — but now follow the Vessel— as in that
of Gawain. The Longer Prose Perceval hints, as we have
seen, at a secret of the sacrament which was held in
utter reserve. It tells us by inference that it was the
revelation of Christ in His own person, behind which
there is another mystery. Only in the texts of tran-
substantiation do we find these deep allusions. The
Conte del Graal has not heard of them ; the Didot
Perceval is aware of an undeclared mystery, but has no
license to speak; the German Parsifal has chiefly an
office of concealed mercy amidst suffering, and hereof is
Heinrich a shadow. Yet all of them, in their several
manners, are haunted from far away : Joseph II. began
in priesthood and therein ends the Perceval of Manessier,
as if he too discerned that those who attained the
Great Mystery were thereby Pontifices maximi. I think
also that the Fish in the Metrical Joseph has curious
sacramental intimations ; it is the sign of spiritual
sustenance, of Christ's presence among His faithful, and
hence of the Eucharist. In the Book of the Holy Graal
it only duplicates one part of a canonical miracle. The
master-key of the Mystery is most surely provided by the
Quest of Galahad, where, after the magical marriage of
High Art and Nature has taken place in transubstantia-
tion, the questing knight bows his head, utters his con-
summatum est, and is dissolved. I conclude that the
Christian and Graal Mystery of the Eucharist was a veil
which could at need be parted by warranted hands, and
that behind it there was then found the path which
The Secret Church
leads to the Union. The knowledge of that path arose
within the Church but led behind it, the Church re-
maining the gate by which man enters into salvation.
The romance-literature of the Graal worked towards
the consciousness of the path, reaching its term in the
last texts of quest.
The French and German Percevals. — The notion of an
exalted hero is given in the Longer Prose Perceval^ but
he does not attain the highest vision, as Galahad does.
The return of the Graal to the Castle after his induction
is only like the return of a Reliquary. By the evidence
of the text itself, he saw less than Arthur. Wolfram's
Parsifal is indeed a dream of Eden, for that which is
likened to the glory of the celestial height is truly of
the supernal Paradise. It is to be understood — without
exhausting the subject — that the poet's religious claim
depends from the genealogy of the Stone, which is that
whereby we are enabled to make the best of both worlds
through a participation in the world which signifies in
the absolute degree. I have said that Wolfram, Chretien
and Heinrich are agreed over the most important of
their concerns, for the wonders of the Feeding Dish in
the Parsifal are only a gross exaggeration of miraculous
sustenance by the Host. The point which remains for
our solution is after what manner did Wolfram and his
source draw from the Secret Tradition. The answer is
that their Graal is the Stone of Knowledge, and the
hidden meaning behind the non-removal of the Graal
is the perpetuity of the Secret Tradition somewhere in
the world. The Mystic Question itself is only, and
can be, the search after knowledge. The Keeper is in
travail therewith — he must communicate, but he must
be asked. The sense is that, in the order of human
prudence, the tradition is in danger of perishing, and the
Keeper must remain, like the Master of a Craft Lodge,
till his successor is appointed. The same idea may lie
behind the Questiones Druidicce, or tests of proficiency
which were put by the Druids to the Bards. The key
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to the meaning of the Stone of Knowledge — that testi-
mony of main importance which we know to have existed
in Guiot — is that the Graal was written in the heavens
and remains therein ; for I do not doubt that the stars
tell the same story. In allegories of this kind the
hindrance to attainment inheres in its necessary condi-
tions. The keeper in Heinrich must press Gawain to
drink, and the brother of the Rich Fisher must persuade
Perceval not to ask questions.
Collectanea Mystica. — (a) The Lesser Hallows. — The
Lance renewed the Graal in some of the legends, but
the places of the Hallows are in certain symbolical
worlds which are known to the Secret Tradition. The
Dish, which, as I have said, signifies little in the
romances, has, for the above reason, aspects of importance
in the Tarot. It was never pretended in any Church
legend that the Sacred Lance was in England. The
Sword of St. John the Baptist was not a relic of the
Celtic or indeed of another Church. The subsidiary
Hallows of the Lesser Chronicles therefore arrived later
than the Graal in Britain, but we do not know how or
why. In the Greater Chronicles many sacred relics were
displayed at the ordination of Joseph II., and they were
evidently brought over in the Ark of the Graal. (b) The
Implicits. — Those of the Graal Keepers are of in-
heritance by genealogical legitimacy, in or out of
marriage. This is simply the succession of initiation.
Masonry recites the order in the same manner with the
same kind of variations. There are three keepers in
the Lesser Chronicles, and there are three archetypal
Craft Lodges. There are nine keepers in the Greater
Chronicles and there are nine Masonic Wardens who pre-
served the Secret Tradition. (2) Merlin is the sorcery of
the sensitive life, which — because of its mixed nature — is
of the serpent on one side and of Eve on the other, who
is a virgin. The admixture makes therefore for righteous-
ness, and the true son, after having been nurtured therein,
is called out of its Egypt ; but it makes also for delusion,
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and when the spirit of the world intervenes all is with-
drawn. (3) Moses is the intrusion of heretical Chris-
tianity into the Holy Place on the ground that it has
the signs. His redemption is promised, but this does
not take place, because it is found afterwards that " the
end is everywhere," and the Church itself is not spared.
(4) As regards the destruction of the Round Table, with
all its chivalry and kinghood, I must register, with
some reluctance, that it seems to convey chiefly a very
simple and also obvious lesson, being that of the fatality
of trespass and the poison instilled into those who partake
of the evil fruit ; but in so far as in some of the texts it
appears predetermined by Merlin, it is not accounted
for so simply. I think that it may be left at this point,
because we have no criterion for distinction between the
enchanter's prophetic foresight and his formal intent.
We should remember, however, (5) that the meaning of
the enchantments and adventures is identified by the
Quest of Galahad with the prevalence of an evil time and
forgetfulness of the great things. It was for much the
same reason that, according to the Vulgate Merlin, the
Round Table was removed to the Kingdom of Leodegan
prior to the coming of Arthur. (6) Sarras was the
place of exit on the outward journey, and was thus the
point at which the holy things began to manifest in the
world ; but it was this also on the return journey, when
they issued forth in mysterium. The transit westward
is here of the soul outward. (7) It must be admitted
that the Lesser Chronicles are in some sense a failure :
they seem to hold up only an imperfect and a partial
glass of vision. But they are full testimony to the
secrecy of the whole experiment ; they are also the most
wonderful cycle by way of intimation. Their especial
key-phrase is my oft-quoted exeunt in mysterium. How
profited the Secret Words to the interned Perceval ?
It is the most ghostly of all suggestions concerning that
which is done in the heart.
The Lost Book. — I have said that Chretien must have
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followed some book which had strange materials. I do
not mean that it was an authorised text of Secret Tradi-
tion, but that there were many rumours oral and written,
and that this was one of the latter. The speculation
concerning it is like the warrant of the nine knights—
that is to say, we can speculate, but we cannot find out.
The alleged document which went before the tradition
at large may have been the rumour of the tradition
itself. We have seen that the Huth Merlin speaks of a
Book of the Sanctuary, as of records continued hence-
forward, like a Calendar of the Saints ; but it is to be
understood that this is romance and not a dark allusion.
If I must admit speculation on my own part and suppose
that there was any written legend of the Graal $er se
in noo, vel circa, I should say that this was a Mass-Book
and there is a hypothetical possibility of such a document ;
but I do not think in my heart that it ever existed. If
it did, I have indicated that it was concerned with such
a Mass as might have been assumed to follow the Last
Supper — when Christ gave Himself visibly, and the
priest served like the altar-boy. I conclude that, in or
out of such a text, the epochs of the literature are those
of origin, manifestation and removal in respect of the
Graal. As to the first, it was part of the mystery of the
Incarnation ; as to the second, there was a manifestation
intended, but it did not take place because the world
was not worthy ; so the third epoch supervened, and the
Graal was said to be removed. This is the secret inten-
tion, exhibited but not declared.
The Great Experiment. — To those who have studied
the secret literatures with something of the spirit in
themselves by which those literatures are informed, it
becomes a matter of assurance that the signs of the
Stewards of the Mysteries have never been wanting in
the world. The Masonic High Grades suggest that
they became Christian, but this is an error of expression :
it was the Official Mysteries that became Christian :
the Stewards had always known that their Redeemer
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The Secret Church
liveth. Again, therefore, it is not surprising that a time
came — and it was in many ways a remarkable time —
when the rumours passed into romance. I speak here
of the encompassing circle of wisdom which stands
round the Great Experiment and not of the things which
lie too deep for words. The memorials of that which
has never been uttered because it is entombed in mani-
festation are about us in all our ways, and for ever and
ever goes out the yearning of the heart in the presence
of these silent witnesses. The genius of romance drew
all things from all quarters to serve its purpose, and
there is no question that the Longer Prose Perceval and
the Quest of Galahad incorporated some of this yearning ;
but I refer more especially to the rumours of the Holy
Threshold. In this connection it is most important to
understand that their makers neither were nor could be
the spokesmen of a secret school. They had heard only,
and it was but dimly that they grasped what they heard.
Otherwise, they would have scarcely put forward the
arch-natural side of relics. The office of minstrelsy and
romance was to collect traditions, to express the current
motive and sentiment. They became the mirror of
their period and had therefore their religious side, which
was accentuated sometimes, as when abbeys like Fecamp
kept a court of song attached to them. A time came,
however, when the consciousness of express intention
intervened ; it is prominent in the Graal cycles, and it
accounts for the great process of editing, harmonising
and allegorising upon earlier texts. The normal limits
of the horizon in romance were not, however, broken up
except by the latest quests. These had also their
restrictions, as I have tried to show previously, and the
complexity of their symbolic machinery has tempted
me to add that alchemy — sealed house of darkness as it
is — seems in a manner more simple. The vessel, the
matter and the fire are the three which give testimony
therein on the physical side, and these are one on the
spiritual. Its literature had also restrictions, more
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
especially in its use of artificial language to conceal the
real sense. It is high commonplace to say that the
device is justified when it is dangerous to speak openly
because the rulers of the Church or the world are jealous,
or when the things which exceed common understanding
are proscribed thereby. I say therefore that conceal-
ment is justified when it is to hide the Secret of the King.
The Inner House of Doctrine. — I have promised to
show whether there is commerce or competition between
the theory of the Great Experiment and that of the
Voided House, but I believe that it has been made clear
abundantly in much that has preceded. The position
is indeed simple, for the Great Experiment exists, but
it is not remembered in the world at large : it is in this
sense that the House is made void. It may well be that
those who said it in romance had imagined an instituted
House, while those others who said in effect : " Lift
up your eyes, for your salvation is both there and here,"
were aware that the roots of the House are not in this
world. The explanation is that the location of the
Secret Church is in that ineffable region which lies,
behind dogma, in glorious sanctuaries. It is not a
repository of relics, and the reliquary is the husk only
of the Holy Graal, which is a mystery of the Eucharist
in its essence and not a legend of the preservation of the
Precious Blood. The location of that Church and the
places of the Hallows therein will be understood by
saying that it is entered sometimes in an ecstasy through
the eastern side of the plainest external sanctuary. It
may be thought that on the evidence of the romances it
is the Secret Church which itself is made void. But
after the departure of the Supreme Mystery, what
remains is the official Church. This does not mean
that the Graal Castle or Temple signifies the official
Church during an age of perfection. It is the inward
mystery of doctrine. So long as it remained there,
however hard of entrance, there was a way in — as
Pausanias tells us that there was a way into the Garden
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The Secret Church
of Venus. It died, however, in the consciousness except
of a few faithful witnesses who knew after what manner
it was still andHs ever possible to lie, like St. John, on
the breast of the Master.
The remembrance of the one thing needful is starred
over all the secret literatures. Their maxim is not so
much that God encompasses as that God is within ;
and in virtue hereof they could say in their hearts what
they said with their lips so often : Absque nube 'pro nobis.
I affirm on the authority of research and on other
authority and on that which I have seen of the Mysteries
and on the high intimations which are communicated to
those who seek, that the Great Experiment subsists,
that those exist who have pursued it, and that behind
the Secret Orders which are good and just and holy,
we discern many traces of the Veiled Masters. The term
of quest in those orders is the term of the Graal Quest,
and the sacraments of procedure are not otherwise
therein. The path of the instituted Mysteries, it should
be understood, is in no sense the only path, but it is one
of the nearest, because the mind is trained therein,
firstly, in the sense of possibility, and, secondly, in the
direction of consciousness, so that it may be overflowed
by the experience of the experiment. It was carried on
in the secret schools ; but at this day the great instituted
Rites are like the Rich King Fisherman, either wounded
or in a condition of languishment, and it is either for the
same symbolic reason — namely, that few are prepared
to come forward and ask the required question — the
equivalent of which is to beget Galahad on the daughter
of King Pelles — or the consciousness of the Great Experi-
ment has closed down upon the Wardens of the Rites
and they stand guard over its memorials only. It has
been pursued also in the official Churches, which are
permanent witnesses to its root-matter in the world.
The two constitute together a great, holy, catholic and
apostolic Church, which is empowered to say : Signatum
est super nos lumen vultus tui. But seeing that it is more
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
than all signatum, we have to look in the deep places for
its hidden virtue. The key which we must take in our
hands is that God is everywhere and that He recom-
penses those who seek Him out. But we do not look to
find Him more especially in the Master's chair of a
Craft Lodge or the pulpit of a popular preacher, and
hence those who are on the quest of the Veiled Masters
will do well to release themselves from the notion of
any corporate fellowship as a sine qud non. I say now
truly and utterly that the Veiled Master is in the heart
of each one of us and the path to his throne is the path
to the Secret Church. Some say that the Pearl without
Price is here, some that it is there, some that it has
been taken into hiding, and some that it is withdrawn
into heaven ; which things are true and without let or
hindrance of my own testimony ; wherefore I add that
if any one can exclaim truly : Nunc dimittis, Domine,
servum tuum secundum verbum tuum in 'pace, it is, and this
only, quoniam vidit oculus meus salutare tuum, and he
then also has seen the Graal.
If I have not spoken my whole mind on certain aspects
and memorials of the Secret Tradition which do now
repose in the instituted but veiled sanctuaries, it is
because I am conscious of several inherent difficulties,
and I remember many covenants. If, therefore, recog-
nising this, some voice in the cloud of listeners should
intervene and say : " But again, where are they — the
Stewards ? " — I should answer, as I could answer only :
" I have brought back from a long and long journey
those few typical memorials which I have interwoven
in this book for the encouragement of some of my
kinship, that where I have been they may enter also in
their time — supposing that they are called in truth. If
they see at the end only the trail of the garments of some
who elude them at a distant angle of the vista, they may
at least confess with me that Titans have gone before and
have cast their shadows behind. To whatever such
quest might lead in one case or another, be it understood,
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The Secret Church
and this clearly, that in assuming the legends of the Holy
Graal as a sacred and beautiful opportunity to speak of
the Eucharist and other divine things connected with
and arising therefrom, I have put forward no personal
claim. If I have dwelt in the secret places it has not
been to return and testify that no others can enter ; and
I, least of all, am the authorised spokesman of Stewards
behind the veil. But that which it has been given me
to do, I have done faithfully, within the measure of my
knowledge : I have indicated the stages of reception,
or the golden links of the chain, from Christian High
Grades of Masonry to the Craft Grades, from the Rosy
Cross to the spiritual alchemists, and from these to the
Graal literature. Behind all this I should look assuredly
to the East, in the direction of that pure catholic
gnosticism which lies like a pearl of great price within
the glistening shell of external Christianity, which is not
of Marcion or Valentinus, of Cerinthus and all their
cohorts, but is the unexpressed mystery of experience in
deep wells whence issues no strife of sects.
We know that in its higher grades the spirit of
imagination moves through a world not manifest, and
this is the world of mystery ; it is that also in which
many are initiated who are called but not chosen utterly ;
yet it is that in which the epopt is at last enthroned —
that world in which the Graal Castle, Corbenic or Mont
Salvatch, the most holy temple and secret sanctuary,
are attainable at any point, all points being out of time
and place. It is the world of Quest, which is also the
world of Attainment. There in fine, at the striking of
a certain mystic hour, that translation takes place in
which the soul is removed, with the Graal thereto
belonging, and it is idle for any one to say that it is
shown henceforth so openly. It is there that the
offices of all the high degrees meet in the term of their
unity, and the great systems also, at which height we
understand vitally what now we realise intellectually —
that the great translation of alchemy, the passage from
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
kingdom to crown in Kabalism, the journey through
Hades to Elysium in the Greek Mysteries and in Dante
as their last spokesman, and lastly the great Quest of
Galahad, are the various aspects and symbolical pre-
sentations of one subject.
At this stage of the interpretation I shall not need
to point out that in the final adjustments even,trj.e
highest symbols are merely pretexts ; they are tokens,
" lest we forget " ; and this is for the same reason that
neither chalice nor paten really impart anything. They
are among the great conventions to which the soul
confesses on the upward path of its progress, but within
their proper offices they are not to be set aside. The
explanation is less that they impart as that through
them the high graces communicate in proportion to the
powers of reception. The soul which has opened up
the heights of the undeclared consciousness within par-
takes as a great vessel of election, while another soul,
which is still under seals, may receive nothing.
Independently of corporate connections, the Mystic
Quest is the highest of all adventures, the mirror of
all knighthood, all institutes of chivalry. And this
Quest is also that of the Graal, but written after another
manner. The makers of the mighty chronicles said
more than they knew that they were saying, but they
knew in part and they saw through a glass darkly. We
are " full of sad and strange experience," though we
have not come to our rest, and for this reason we are in
a better position to understand the old books than when
they were first drawn into language. Better than they
who wrote them in their far past do we now know after
what manner the highest things go forth into mystery ;
but of the gate they knew and of the way also. Chivalry
was a mystery of idealism and the Graal a mystery of
transfiguration, but when it was removed from this
world it was not any further away.
We have, on these considerations, and many others,
every cause to be thankful to those learned persons who
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The Secret Church
have gone before us, taking such lamps as they have
been licensed to carry ; but in the last resource the term
of learning is attained, after which there is only the
great light which can be made to enlighten every man
who comes into this world. It is that sun which shines
in Mont Salvatch, in Sarras, the spiritual city, and in the
place of rest which is Avalon. It exhibits the abiding
necessity of the sacraments as well as their suspension ;
it exhibits that priesthood which comes rather by
inward grace than by apostolical succession, albeit those
who deny the succession are usually far from the grace.
The monks sat in their cells and stalls and scriptoria
during the great adventurous times when the rumour
of the Holy Graal moved through the world of litera-
ture ; they dreamed of a chivalry spiritualised and a
church of sanctity exalted : so came into being the
Longer Prose Perceval, the Quest of Galahad and the
Parsifal of Wolfram. Whether in the normal conscious-
ness I know not or in the subconsciousness I know not
—God knoweth — that dream of theirs was of the super-
concealed sanctuary behind the known chancel and the
visible altar. This is the sense of all that which I under-
stand concerning the traces of the Secret Church in
the Graal literature. As before, I am not speaking of
formal institutions, of esoteric brotherhoods, or incor-
porations of any kind ; it is a question of the direction
of consciousness and of its growth in that direction.
A man does not leave the external church because he
enters into the spiritual Church ; Ruysbroeck does not
cease to say Mass because he has been in those heights
and across those seas of which we hear in his Adornment
of the Spiritual Marriage. At the same time his language
is not exactly that of the official Church in its earliest
. or latest encyclical ; it is not like that of St. Irenaeus
writing against heresies or Pius X. denouncing the spirit
of modernism. It is something the same as, if one may
say it, in the brotherhood of Masonry. The craft
degrees are the whole summary of Masonry, but there
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
is a certain distinction between him who has taken these
only and him who has added thereto the eighteenth
degree of Rose Croix, or the still more exalted and now
almost secret grade of Knights Beneficent of the Holy
City of Jerusalem. Yet the one is a Mason and the other
is not more than a Mason, but there are or at least
there may be degrees of consciousness in the Mysteries.
So also the lay member of any one among the official
Churches whose instruction has scarcely exceeded the
catechisms of Christian doctrine is not — or need not
be at least— less a Christian than he who has studied
Summa, but again there are degrees of consciousness in
the mystery of the faith.
Now the Secret Tradition in Christian times is the
rumour of the Secret Sanctuary, and this tradition has
many voices. The voice of spiritual alchemy, succeeding
that of the Graal, is the voice of the Graal literature
under another veil, but it says that He is there ; and
after its departure it is known and recorded that many
earnest and holy persons beheld the Vessel of Singular
Devotion : yet there is something wanting in the
official sanctuaries. The voice of the Temple, reflected
in its later revival, says that He is risen and gone away.
The voice of Masonry says that the old Temple was not
built according to the true and original plan. The
voice of the Rosy Cross says that in places withdrawn
He, being dead, yet testifies. The voice of St. John on
Patmos says that he was given a book to eat, and that
in his mouth it was sweet but in his belly it was bitter —
because thenceforward he was in travail with the Secret
Doctrine. The witness of the Graal literature heard
something at a very great distance, and to decorate
what they had heard the artists of the literature gathered
from the four quarters of romance and legend and
folk-lore. As such their reflection is a failure. The
witness of alchemical books chose a worse medium, but
they made it serve their purpose more expressly. The
voice of Masonry created a great legend to commemorate
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The Secret Church
an universal loss, and testified that the Quest would
never end till the speculative Masons found that which
was once among them. The Voice of the Rosy Cross
said that, having found the body of the Master, the
brethren again closed the sepulchre and set their seals
thereon, though they also looked for a great resurrection.
The voice of St. John reflected the last message of the
Master : " Behold, I come quickly." And all Christendom
has resounded since with the anthem : " Amen, even so,
come, Lord Jesus." The Hidden Voice of Christ is in
the Secret Literature, and I have therefore written this
book as the text-book of a Great Initiation. Mean-
while, the Churches are not made void, but they are in
widowhood and desolation, during which time our place
is with them, that we may offer them comfort in their
sorrow, without being deceived by their distractions.
It is certain also that His reflections abide with them.
Chretien may have drawn from an episodic romance of
adventure in the possession of the Count of Flanders.
Master Blihis, the great maker of fables, may have recited
things, with or without consequence, concerning Sanctum
Graal. Neither these nor others that could be men-
tioned are the books concerning the Secret Words of
the Eucharist or the text of Secret Ordination. The
legends of Welsh saints may tell us of Sacred Hosts
coming down from heaven, but the Epiclesis clause, if
the Welsh had it, in their book of the Mass, is not the
Lost Word which we seek like the Mason. They may
tell us also of holy personages who were consecrated by
Christ, and the fables may be famous indeed, but they
want the motive which fills the Greater Chronicles of
the Holy Graal with meaning and suggestions of mean-
ing. Therefore I still hear and listen with all my ears
while the voices of many traditions say the same things
differently. The Holy Sepulchre is empty ; the Tomb
of C. R. C. in the House of the Holy Spirit is sealed up ;
the Word of Masonry is lost ; the Zelator of alchemy
now looks in vain for a Master. The traditional book
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
of the Graal, by whatever name of convention we may
choose to term it — Liber Gradalis or Sanctum Graal—
is not only as much lost as that which was eaten by
St. John, though it might not be so difficult to conjecture
the elements in the one as in the other case.
And now to make an end of these pleadings : I have
chosen to give some account of the Holy Graal as it
was and as it is, that I could lead up to what it might
be, that is to say, how it could be realised in high
literature, because in other respects some things which
might be in the ideal order are those also which are—
and God redeems the future as well as the past. As
regards therefore the true theory of this mystery, with
others of the mystic school, we may hope in the Lord
continually, even as one who believes that he will not
be confounded unto eternity. Reason has many palaces,
but the sovereign peace rules in a single place. Dilated
in the mystery of cloud and moisture and moonlight,
the Graal appears even now, and that suddenly. It
abides in the memory for those who can live in its light,
and it is elevated in the light for those who can so keep
it in the high spirit of recollection that it has become
their guide and their nourishment. For myself it is in
virtue of many related dedications that I have allocated
a great experiment in literature to a great consanguineous
experiment in spiritual life. I have not so much demon-
strated the value of a pure hypothesis as elucidated after
what manner those who are concerned with the one
subject do from all points return triumphantly thereto.
As a seeker after the high mysteries, at this last I testify
that whosoever shall in any subject offer me daily bread, I
will say to him : " But what of the Panis vivus et vitalis P
What of the supersubstantial bread ? " And if there be
any one who deals therein, under what rules soever of
any houses of exchange, I will have him know that if
he sells in the open market, even I am a buyer. So
therefore the author of this book gives thanks that
he has written concerning the romance-pageants and
686
The Secret Church
sanctity as of the catholic and eternal secrets of religion.
Quod, erat demonstrandum : it is written for those alone
who in the silence of the heart and in a sacred suspension
of the senses have heard the voice of the Graal.
In the great desolation of Logres I hear also — I hear
and I hear — the penitent Knight Lancelot singing his
twelve-month Mass. So also till he turns at the Altar
saying : lie, Missa est, because the King himself is coming
in the morning tide, I will respect all the findings of
scholarship concerning quests which are not of the
Graal and Cups which contain no sacrament, but I am
on the quest of the Graal and, Master of True Life,
after all and all and all, it is not so far to Thee. And
even Gwalchmai saw it.
colopjjon of tfjfc fioofe
to all totjom it map
concern on tfje ©treat Ctuetft,
687
APPENDIX
A BRIEF METHODISED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF
THE HOLY GRAAL
IN LITERATURE AND CRITICISM
Comprising a Key to the Study of the Texts and the
Several Schools of Interpretation
PART I
THE TEXTS
IT is desirable in fairness to myself, but more especially out of
justice to my readers, that the limitations of these sections should
be made plain from the beginning. A complete bibliography of
the Holy Graal in literature and criticism should assuredly in-
clude, so far as the texts are concerned, at least a sufficient study
of the chief manuscripts ; and in respect of the critical works it
should embrace a survey of continental periodical literature —
chiefly French and German — wherein a very important part
is, and will remain, imbedded. The large knowledge which is
necessary in one of these cases, the opportunity in the other, and
the space in regard to both, would — I must confess — fail me, were
so ambitious a research called for ; but it exceeds the scope of my
purpose, as it would have little or no appeal to those whom I
address. I have confined myself, therefore, to particulars of the
printed texts, to the most important of the critical works, and
to a few characteristic essays towards interpretation along inde-
pendent lines, because these — whatever their value — will be of
interest to mystic students, if only as counsels of caution. As
regards the intermediate group, I have sought in a few words to
indicate, where possible, certain points of correspondence with
my own thesis. If, therefore, it be inferred that this section is
written in the spirit and exists in the interests of a partisan, I
shall neither dissuade nor protest ; but rather — that I may do all
things sincerely within my particular field — I will begin by
assuming that the matter of my own research, having to be
judged by unusual canons, would be unlikely, in any case, to
receive the imprimatur of the existing schools. In so far as my book
689 2 X
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
has been done zealously and truly, I believe that it will engage
their interest, at whatever cost of disagreement, and my debt of
gratitude to their great, patient and productive research may be a
little reduced should any of them here and there feel that a new
vista has been opened. They also know that although the Graal
literature began in folk-lore it did not end therein ; and if its
consanguinities — actual, but yet remote — with secret ways of
thought and strange schools of experience should be naturally out-
side their sphere, it may even be that the end which I descry is not
so foreign after all but that they have almost caught at it in dreams.
A. EARLY EPOCHS OF THE QUEST, being documents that
embody materials which have been elsewhere incorporated into
the Graal legends, but do not themselves refer to the Holy
Vessel ; in their extant form these texts are much later than
the rest of the literature.
1. Peredur the son of Evrawc^ first printed, with the Welsh
text, translation and notes, in the Mabinogion, by Lady Charlotte
E. Guest, 3 vols., 1849 ; a second edition, without the text and
with abridged notes, appeared in 1877. The collection has
since been reissued in many forms, and is available in the
Temple Classics and another popular series. The edition of
Mr. Alfred Nutt, first published in 1902, with notes by the editor,
has an appeal to scholars. The Mabinogion have been also trans-
lated into French and German.
2. The Romance of Syr Percyvelle of Galles, included in The
Thornton Romances, edited by J. O. Halliwell, and published by
the Camden Society in 1844. The manuscript is preserved in
the Library of Lincoln Cathedral, and Robert Thornton, its
scribe, is thought to have compiled the collection about 1440.
The year mentioned is speculative in two ways : (a) because the
Thornton volume can only be dated approximately, and (/>)
because the poem with which we are concerned is almost un-
questionably a transcript from an unknown original. By the
evidence of language and style it is thought, however, to belong
to the approximate period of its transcription. Syr Percyvelle is
a rhymed poem of 2228 lines.
B. LE CONTE DEL GRAAL. — I. Le Poeme de CHRETIEN DE
TROYES et de ses continuateurs d'apres le manuscrit de MONS, being
vols. 2 to 6 of Perceval le Gallois, ou le Conte du Graal — vide infra
for the first volume, containing the romance in prose. This is
so far the only printed edition, and it was produced under the
auspices of C. Potvin for the Societe des Bibliophiles Beiges. It
appeared from 1866 to 1871, and copies are exceedingly rare.
The text is that of a manuscript in the Bibliotheque Communale
690
Appendix
fie MONS, and ft is considered unfavourably by scholarship. The
equipment of the editor has been also regarded as insufficient,
but the pains which made the poem available deserve our highest
thanks, and the gift has been priceless. I believe that a new
edition is promised in Germany. It may be useful to mention that
the work of Chretien is held to have ended at line 10,601 ; that
of Gautier — but here opinions differ — at line 34,934 ; while the
conclusion of Manessier extends the work to 45,379 lines, not
including the fragment of Gerbert, which exceeds 15,000 lines.
The excursus which M. Potvin appended to his last volume is
still pleasant reading, but it represents no special research and at
need is now almost negligible. It seems to look favourably on the
dream of a Latin primordial Graal text ; it affirms that the Conte
was called the Bible du demon by Gallic monks of old, and that
Lancelot of the Lake was placed on the Index by Innocent III.
II. The Berne Perceval. Our chief knowledge of this un-
printed text is due to Alfred Rochat, who gave extracts therefrom
in Veber elnen bisher unbekannten Percheval li Gallois (Zurich, 1855).
It has variations which are important for textual purposes, but
the conclusion only is of moment to ourselves. In the first
place, it is an attempt to complete the Quest of Perceval prac-
tically within the limits of Gautier's extension, which it does,
in a summary manner, by recounting how the Fisher King dies
within three days of Perceval's second visit and how the latter
becomes Keeper of the Graal. The version follows the historical
matter of the Lesser Chronicles, which is of interest in view
of my remarks on pp. 207 and 235. The Fisher King is Brons ;
he is the father of Alain le Gros ; and his wife is sister to Joseph
of Arimathaea. It will be noted that this is the succession of the
Didot Perceval^ the Keepership not passing to Alain.
III. Tresplaisante et Recreative Hystoire du trespreulx et vaillant
chevallier Perceval le Galloys . . . lequel acheva les adventures du
Sainct Graaly &c. — Paris, 1530. This is the prose version of
the Conte del Graal, the summaries of which are given among
the marginal notes of Potvin's text of the poem. It includes, in
certain copies, the important Elucidation^ which was long thought
to exist only in this form. The object which actuated the edition
is stated very simply — namely, to place a work which had long
become archaic in an available form. As such, it might appeal
to some readers who would be hindered by the difficulties of th
original, but it is available only in a few great libraries.
The Conte del Graal is said to have been translated into
Spanish and published at Seville in 1526. We may assume, in
this case, that it is in prose, and the interesting point concerning
691
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
it would then be that it anteceded the French prose version. I
do not think that its existence detracts from my general con-
clusion that the Quest of Perceval had little appeal, during that
period when the literature of chivalry reigned, in Spain and
Portugal. The full title is Historia de Perceval de Gaula, Ca-
ballero de la Tabla Rotonda, but at a later period it has been
suggested alternatively that it is really a Spanish version of the
Longer Prose Perceval. No one seems to have seen it. A
Flemish and an Icelandic version remain unprinted.
C. THE LESSER CHRONICLES. — It is understood that I have
adopted this title as comprehensive and suitable for my purpose,
but there is no collection of manuscripts which bears the name.
I. Le Roman du Saint Graal, public pour la premiere fois d'apres
un manuscrit de la Bibliotheque Royale, par FRANCISQUE MICHEL,
Bordeaux, 1841. The manuscript in question is unique and the
poem which is now under consideration consists of 3514 lines.
There is a lacuna between lines 2752 and 2753, being at and
about that point when destruction overwhelms the false Moses in
the prose version. The metrical romance was reprinted in the
Dictionnaire des Ltgendes, forming part of Migne's Troisieme . . .
Encyclopedic Theologique, and in this form is still, I believe, avail-
able. It was also included by Dr. Furnivall in his edition of the
Seynt Graal or the Sank Ryal, printed for the Roxburgh Club,
2 vols., 1861-63.
It seems desirable to couple with this text certain archaic
English versions of the Joseph legend : (a) The alliterative
poem of Joseph of Aramathie, otherwise, the Romance of the Seint
Graa/y known only by the Vernon MS. at Oxford, which belongs
to the middle of the fourteenth century. It is a summary of the
Book of the Holy Graal^ beginning with the release of Joseph
from the tower and ending with the departure from Sarras. It is
imperfect at the inception, and, of course, breaks off far from the
term. (b) The Lyfe of Joseph of Armathy^ printed by Wynkyn de
Worde and corresponding to the account given by Capgrave in
his Nova Legenda Anglice. It pretends to be founded on a book
discovered by the Emperor Theodosius at Jerusalem. It is
evident, however, that this is really the Book of the Holy Graal,
though the account of Joseph's imprisonment follows the Apo-
cryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and there is no reference to the
Holy Vessel, (c) The Lyfe of Joseph of Armathia^ believed to have
been written about the year 1502, and first printed in 1520.
The authorship is entirely unknown and so are manuscripts prior
to publication. It is, of course, much too late to possess any
historical importance. It is exceedingly curious, and, in spite of
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Appendix
its rude verse and chaotic manner, is not without a certain
pictorial sense and vividness. In place of the Sacred Vessel of
Reception there are two cruets substituted in which the blood of
Christ was collected by Joseph. These fragments are all included
by the Rev. W. W. Skeat in his Joseph of Arimathie, published for
the Early English Text Society, 1871.
II. The Lesser Holy Graal, i.e. Le Petit Saint Graal, ou Joseph
d? Arimathie^ is known by a number of MSS., one of which is
called Cange ; it belongs to the thirteenth century and is preserved
in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. Two codices, together
with a version in modern French, are included in the first volume
of Le Saint Graal, published by Eugene Hucher, 3 vols., Paris,
1874. This text was regarded by the editor as De Borron's
original work, from which the metrical version was composed
later on by an unknown hand.
III. The Early Prose Merlin. We have seen that the metrical
Romance of Joseph concludes at line 3514, after which the
unique MS. proceeds, without any break, to the life of Merlin,
reaching an abrupt term at line 4018, all being missing thereafter.
This fragment is included in the text of Michel. The complete
prose version forms the first part of the Vulgate and the second of
the Huth Merlin, the bibliographical particulars of which are
given later. It follows from one, and apparently one only, of
the Early Merlin codices that Robert de Borron proposed as his
next branch to take the life of Alain, and in so stating he, or his
personator, uses some of the words which occur in the colophon
of his Joseph poem. It appears further that the Alain branch was
intended to show how the enchantments fell upon Britain.
IV. The Didot Perceval^ i.e. Perceval^ ou la Quete du Saint
Graa/y par Robert de Borron. This text is included in the first
volume of Hucher's collection, with a summary prefixed thereto.
The date borne by the MS. is 1301. The root-matter of the
romance is, of course, the non-Graal myth of Perceval, the
existence of which is posited on such excellent grounds by
scholarship. Critical opinion is perhaps equally divided on the
question whether the Didot Perceval does or does not represent
the third part of De Borron's metrical trilogy. The name of
Gaston Paris must be ranged on the affirmative side, and on the
negative that of Mr. Alfred Nutt.
D. THE GREATER CHRONICLES. — It is again understood that
this title is merely a matter of convenience in connection with
my particular classification of texts.
I. The Book of the Holy Graal, i.e. Le Saint Graal ou Joseph
d'Arimathie. There are several MSS., among which may be
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
mentioned that of the Bibliotheque de la Vtlle de Mam, which is
referred to the middle of the thirteenth century. Other codices
are at Cambridge and in the British Museum. It was first edited
by Furnivall (op. «'/.), from the MSS. preserved in England, and
subsequently by Hucher, forming vols. 2 and 3 of his collection,
as described previously. Dr. Furnivall also included the English
rendering called The Seynt Graal or Sank Ryal, known by a single
MS. attributed to the middle of the fifteenth century. The work
is in conventional verse of very poor quality, the author being
Henry Lovelich or Lonelich, described as a skinner, but of whom
no particulars are forthcoming. It is a rendering by way of
summary extending to nearly 24,000 lines, with several extensive
lacunae. Outside the testimony of its existence to the interest in
the Graal literature, as illustrated by the pains of translation at a
length so great, it has no importance for our subject. It was
again edited by Dr. Furnivall (1874—78) for the Early English
Text Society, but after thirty-four years it remains incomplete,
no titles or a satisfactory introduction to the text having been
produced.
II. The Vulgate Merlin, i.e. Le Roman de Merlin, or the
Early History of King Arthur. The available French text is that
which was edited, in 1884, by Professor H. Oskar Sommer from
the Add. MS. 10292 in the British Museum. It is ascribed to
the beginning of the fourteenth century. The prose version of
Robert de Borron's substantially lost poem is brought to its term
in this edition at the end of Chapter V. With this the reader
may compare, and is likely to use at his pleasure, Merlin, or the
Early History of King Arthur, edited for the Early English Text
Society by Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, 1865-99, which during
another modest period of thirty-four years has certainly produced a
satisfactory and valuable edition of the anonymous rendering of
the Vulgate Merlin preserved in the unique MS. of the University
Library, Cambridge. This text is allocated to A.D. 1450-60, and
as a translation it is fairly representative of the French original. A
metrical rendering has been edited from an Auchinleck MS. by
Professor E. Koelling in his Arthour and Merlin, Leipsic, 1890.
I have spoken of Les Propheties de Merlin, which appeared with
no date at Rouen, but probably in 1520 or thereabouts. It
claims to be translated from the Latin, and contains episodes of
Merlin's history which are unlike anything in the canonical texts.
A few points may be enumerated as follows : (a) In place of the
faithful Blaise of the other chronicles, there is a long list of the
scribes employed by Merlin to record his prophecies, being (i)
Master Tholomes, who subsequently became a bishop ; (2) Master
694
Appendix
Anthony ; (3) Meliadus, the brother of Sir Tristram and paramour
of the Lady of the Lake ; (4) the sage clerk, Raymon ; (5) Rubers,
the chaplain. (£) The prophet in this curious romance is unbridled
in his amours, (c] The account of his internment by the Lady of
the Lake recalls the parallel story in the Huth Merlin, but differs
also therefrom, (d) There is a full portrayal of Morgan le Fay,
her early life and her transition from beauty to ugliness through
evil arts of magic, (e) The sin and suffering of Moses are also
recounted. (/) The Siege Perilous at the Third Table is said to
have been occupied, with disastrous results, by a knight named
Rogier le Bruns. (g) There is a summary of the circumstances
under which Joseph of Arimathaea and his son Joseph II. came
to Britain for its conversion, (h) But perhaps the most remarkable
episode is that of the meeting between King Arthur and a damosel
in the church of St. Stephen. She came sailing over the land in
that ship which afterwards carried Arthur to Avalon.
The early printed editions of the Vulgate Merlin, which
appeared at Paris from 1498 and onward, have variations from
the textus receptus, representing the ingenuities of successive
editors. An Italian Merlin was issued at Venice and again at
Florence towards the end of the fifteenth century. I shall speak
later of texts printed in Spain.
III. The Huth Merlin, i.e. Merlin — Roman en prose du
Xllle slecle, pub lie avec la mise en prose du poeme de Merlin de
Robert de Boron, d'apres le manuscrit appartenant a M. Alfred
H. Huth, par Gaston Paris et Jacob Ulrich. 2 vols., Paris,
1886. The position and content of this romance have been
dealt with so fully in the text that, although much rests to be
said in a complete analysis, it will be sufficient for my purpose to
enumerate three casual points: (a) The unique portion — which
is the great bulk of the story — is believed to have been composed
after the Lancelot ; (b) it is perhaps for this reason that it shares
responsibility for the unfavourable portraiture of Gawain which
characterises most of the Greater Chronicles ; (c] in some undecided
way the death of a lady who killed herself over the body of a
knight, slain by Balyn in self-defence, is said by Merlin to involve
the latter in dealing " the stroke most dolourous that ever man
stroke, except the stroke of our Lord."
IV. The Great Prose Lancelot. The importance of this
romance is fully recognised by scholarship, and the careful
collation of the numerous manuscripts is desired, but so far it
remains a counsel of perfection. No text has been edited in
modern days, and though the reissue of one of the old printed
versions, on account of their great extent, was unlikely under any
69S
V
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
circumstances, it is singular that not even a satisfactory modernised
rendering has been so far produced. In 1488 the Lancelot
appeared at Paris in three folio volumes, and as there were other
editions it is only necessary to mention that of 1533, which
bears the imprint of Philippe le Noir, because great stress has
been laid thereon. In his Studies on the Sources of Malory's Morte
a" Arthur, Dr. Sommer has taken as his basis the edition of 1513,
but without expressing preference. It appears from this text
(a) that Galahad was acquainted with his paternity even in his
childhood, and (b) that he was sent to the abbey of white nuns
by King Pelles, his grandfather. The omission of these details
by Malory enhances the sacred mystery of the story.
V. The Longer Prose Perceval. This text constitutes the
first volume of Potvin's Conte del Graal, as described in section B.
Of its translation by Dr. Sebastian Evans under its proper title of
The High History of the Holy Graal, I have said sufficient to
indicate the gratitude which is due to a new sacrament in litera-
ture from those who are in the grace of the sacraments. The
original is known in textual criticism as Perceval li Gallois and
Perlesvaux. The date of composition is referred by its first editor
to the end of the twelfth century, but later authorities assign it to
a period not much prior to 1225. The manuscript itself is allo-
cated broadly to the thirteenth century, and is preserved in the
Bibliotheque de Bourgogne at Brussels. The second of the
Hengvvrt Graal texts, of which we shall hear shortly, is a
Welsh version of the Longer Prose Perceval and is a short re-
cension which abounds in mistranslations, but at the same time it
supplies a missing portion of the manuscript to which we owe
the story in its printed form. If some of its variations were
important, they might lie under a certain suspicion on account of
the translator's defects, but I do not know that there is anything
which need detain us concerning it. I will add only that a Berne
MS. contains two fragments, some account of which has been
given by Potvin and Dr. Evans. It should be noted, however,
that since the edition of Potvin appeared in 1866, several other
codices have come to light, but it has not been suggested that
they offer important variations. A French text is also supposed
to have been printed in 1521.
VI. The Quest of Galahad, otherwise La Queste del Saint
Graal, the head and crown of the legend, is, in the early printed
texts, either incorporated with the prose Lancelot, as in the edition
of 1513, already mentioned, or with the Book of the Holy Graal,
as in the Paris edition of 1516, which is called: Uhystoire du
sainct Greaal, qui est le premier livre de la Table Ronde. . . .
696
Appendix
Ensemble la Queste dudict sainct Greaal, ffaicte par Lancelot, Galaad,
Boors et Perceval qui est le dernier livre de la Table Ronde, &c.
But that which is available more readily to students who desire
to consult the original is La Queste del Saint Graal : Edited by
F. J. Furnivall, M.A., for the Roxburghe Club, London, 1864.
Every one is, however, aware that the great prose Quest was
rendered almost bodily into the Morte d Arthur of Sir Thomas
Malory, first printed by Caxton in the year 1485, as the colophon
of the last book sets forth. The full title is worth reproducing
from the edition of Robert Southey, as follows : The Byrth, LyJ,
and Actes of Kyng Arthur ; of his Noble Knyghtes of the Rounde
Table, theyr merveyllous enquestes and aduentures, thachyeuyng of
the Sane Greal ; and In the end LE MORTE DARTHUR, with the
Dolourous Deth and departyng out of thys worlde of them all. Dr.
H. Qskar Sommer has of recent years (1889 91) faithfully re-
printed the Caxton Malory in three volumes of text, introduction
and studies on the sources. This constitutes the textus receptus.
Other editions, abridgments and modern versions are too numer-
ous for mention.
VII. The Welsh Quest, i.e. T Selnt Great, being the Adventures
of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, In the Quest of the
Holy Greal, and on other occasions. Edited with a Translation and
Glossary, by the Rev. Robert Williams, M.A., London, 1876.
This is the first volume of Selections from the Hengwrt MSS., the
second appearing in 1892 and containing the Gests of Charlemagne,
with other texts outside our particular subject. The Welsh Quest
is entitled simply The Holy Greal and is divided into two parts,
of which the first concerns Galahad and his peers, the second
being that recension of The Longer Prose Perceval to which refer-
ence has been made above.
E. THE GERMAN CYCLE. — As the French legends of the
Holy Graal are reducible in the last resource to the Quest of
Galahad, so are those of Germany summed up in the epic poem
with which we are now so well acquainted and which here
follows in my list.
I. The Parsifal of Wolfram von Eschenbach was written
some time within the period which intervened between 1200
and 1215, the poet dying, as it is believed, about 1220, while
towards the close of his life he was occupied with another long
composition, this time on the life of William of Orange. I con-
ceive that in respect of the German Cycle I shall have no
occasion to speak of early printed editions, so I will name only
(a) The critical edition based on various manuscripts, by Karl
Lachmann, a fourth issue of which appeared at Berlin in 1879;
697
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
(/>) the text edited by Karl Bartsch and published in Deutsche
Classiker des Mittelalters, vols. ix.-xi., 1875-9; (c) the metrical
rendering in modern German, published from 1839 to 1841 by
A. Schulz, under the name of San Marte ; (d) the modern
version by Simrock, 1842 ; (e) that of Dr. Botticher in rhyme-
less measures, 1880 ; (/) and in fine the translation into English
of Parzival : a Knightly Epic, by Miss Jessie L. Weston, 2
vols., London, 1894.
II. The poem of Heinrich von dem Tiirlin, entitled Dm
Crone. Of this text there was a servicable edition published at
Stuttgart in 1852, under the editorship of G. H. F. Scholl, who
prefixed a full introduction. The work forms the twenty-seventh
volume of the Bibliothek des Lltterarhchen Vereins. It was again
edited in 1879.
III. The Titurel of Albrecht von Scharfenberg — i.e. Der
Jungcre Titurel — was edited in 1842 for the Bibliothek der Deutschen
National Litter atur by K. A. Hahn. It was also edited by E.
Droyran in 1872 under the title Der Tempel des Heiligen Graal.
In my account of this poem — but presumably because the parti-
cular legend is scarcely within my subject — I have omitted to
mention that the history of Lohengrin is given in a more ex-
tended form than that of Wolfram, and the catastrophe — which
is also different — involves the destruction of the Swan Knight.
IV. The Dutch Lancelot. Seeing that the extant text of this
compilation exceeds 90,000 lines, it will be understood that the
task of editing and carrying it through the press was not likely to
be attempted on more than a single occasion, the heroic scholar
being M. Jonckbloet. The Morten section was subsequently
treated separately by M. T. Winkel. The few to whom it is
accessible assign to the whole poem a place of importance as a
reflection in part of materials which are not otherwise extant.
There was also a German Lanzelet^ by Ulrich von Zatzikhofen,
whose work is usually ascribed to the end of the twelfth or the
beginning of the thirteenth century : in this case he preceded
Wolfram, which theory recent criticism is, however, inclined
to question. Ulrich followed a French model.
F. THE SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE CYCLES. — Among the
more popular historians of Spanish literature, it is customary to
pass over the texts of romantic chivalry with the citation of a few
typical examples, such as Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin of England and
Don Belianis of Greece. I speak under all reserves, having no
special knowledge of the subject, but as a comprehensive analysis
of the vast printed literature does not appear to have been
attempted, except in Spanish, so it seems reasonable to speculate
698
Appendix
that there may be many texts in manuscript still practically
entombed in public and monastic libraries, and their discovery
might extend our scanty knowledge concerning Spanish books of
the Graal. The same observation may apply also to Portugal ; but
in the absence of all research we must be content with the little
which has been gleaned from the common sources of knowledge.
I. El Baladro del Sabio Merlin con sus Profcias, printed at
Burgos in 1498, of which there is a single extant copy, preserved
in a private library at Madrid. The analysis of contents furnished
to Gaston Paris shows it to contain : (a) The Early Prose Merlin
of Robert de Borron : (/>) the continuation of the Huth Merlin,
so far as the recital of the marriage of Arthur and Guinevere, or
a few pages further ; and (c) three final chapters which are un-
known in the extant Merlin texts, but are thought to be derived
from the lost Conte du Brait of the so-called Helie de Borron.
II. Merlin y demanda del Santo Grial, Seville, 1500. But of
this text I find no copy in English public libraries, and there are
few particulars available. It is mentioned by Leandro Fernandez
de Moratin in his Origines del Teatro Espanol, Madrid, 1830.
I suggest, however, that it may have been reprinted in
III. La Demanda del Sancto Grial : con los marvillosos fechos de
Lancarote y de Galas su hijo, Toledo, 1515. This is now in the
British Museum, but was once in the collection of Heber, who
had heard of no other copy. It is divided into two parts, being
respectively the Romance of Merlin and a version of the Quest of
Galahad. The first part corresponds to the Burgos El Baladro,
as we know this by the analysis of its contents, and I believe the
texts to be substantially identical, though that of Toledo is much
longer and is divided into numbered paragraphs, or short sections,
instead of into forty chapters. But the reference to El Baladro
in the Libros de Caballerias by Pascual de Gayangos, Madrid,
1857, seems to show that these chapters were subdivided into
sections or paragraphs. The first part is therefore based on the
Huth Merlin, and the second seems to represent the lost Quest
attached thereto. It is indeed nearly identical with
IV. El Historia dos Cavalleiros da Mesa Rcdonda e da Demanda
do Santo Graal, which is the Portuguese Quest of Galahad, partly
printed from a Viennese manuscript by Carl von Rein hard -
stoellner in Handschrift No. 2594 der K. K. Hofbibliothek zu
Wien, 1887. The points concerning it are (a) that it is attributed
to Robert dc Borron ; (/>) that it contains things missing from the
extant French Quest ; (c) that it mentions the promised wounding
of Gawain because he attempted to draw from the block of
marble that sword which was intended for Galahad alone ; (d)
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The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
that it narrates the murder of Bademagus by Gawain ; and (e)
that generally it seems to correspond with the indications con-
cerning the missing Quest which were gleaned from various
sources by Gaston Paris, and included in his Introduction to the
Huth Merlin, § v., La Quete du Saint Graal, vol. i. pp. 1— Ixii.
G. ADDITAMENTA. — The following brief particulars may
interest some of my readers, (i) As regards the Saone de Nausay,
this Northern French poem of 21,321 lines was edited by Moritz
Goldschmid, and forms the 2 1 6th publication Der Litter arischen
Vereins in Stuttgart. Saone, or Sone, who is the hero, received
the communication of the mystery of the Holy Graal, and was
the means of saving Norway with the help of a sword which
once belonged to Joseph of Arimathasa. He married the king's
daughter, and reigned after him. The Holy Palladium is described
as // vaisseau . . . qui jadis fu grealz nomrncs. (2) As Sir Tristram
went in search of the Graal, according to some of the French
romances, those who are disposed to go further into this side-
issue may consult the extended analysis of the Roman de Tristan,
which forms Fascicule 82 of the Bibliotheque de PEcole des
Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1890-91. He will there find Galahad
among the other peers of the Quest, but he is no longer more
than a shadow of the perfect Knight. (3) The nearest approach
to the Perceval question is in the sense of its antithesis, and
perhaps the most express form hereof is in the old Provencal
metrical romance which has been translated into modern French
by Mary Lapon as Les ^ventures du Chevalier Jaufre ct de la
Belle Brunissende, Paris, 1856. Violence and contumely befall
the hero every time that he asks a specific question, being why at
a certain period of the day every inhabitant of a given district,
from peasant to peer, falls into loud lamentation. A fatality
leads him, however, to go on asking, just as another fatality
prevents the Graal question. The explanation in the present
case is that a knight has been wounded, and that whenever the
hurt heals it is reopened by the cruelty of his enemy. Sir Jaufre,
or Geoffrey, is the son of Dovon, and he is known in the French
cycle of Arthurian romance.
PART II
SOME CRITICAL WORKS
It should be understood that the editors of the various texts
mentioned in Part I. have prefixed or appended thereto intro-
ductory matter of a less or more elaborate kind, and that they are
700
Appendix
therefore, within their measure, to be regarded as critical editions.
To these introductions I do not propose to refer in the present
section, nor do I lay any claim either to analysis of contents
or exhaustive bibliographical enumeration. The list will be
useful for those who desire to carry their studies further, more
especially along textual lines, and it has no higher pretension.
As it follows, within certain limits, a chronological arrangement,
it will help to indicate the growth of the criticism.
Joseph Gorres : Lohengrin, ein alt Deutsche Gedicht, &c., 1813.
The introduction is sympathetic and interesting as an
early study of the Graal literature. The text is a Vatican
MS. It may be mentioned that, according to Gorres, Mont
Salvatch stands in Salvatierra, in Arragonia, at the entrance
into Spain, close to the Valley of Ronceval.
Le Roux de Lincy : Analyse critique et litteraire du Roman de
Garin, &c., 1835. And Essai historique et litteraire sur
lyabbaye de Fecamp, 1840.
This author also was a student of the subject, and his later
work is still our authority for the Fecamp legend.
Paulin Paris : Les Manuscrits fran^ois de la Bibliotheque du Roi,
7 vols., 1836—48, and Les Romans de la Table Ronde, 5 vols.,
1868-1877.
In the first work is contained what I believe to be the
earliest account of certain unprinted Graal texts. The
second has modernised versions of The Metrical Joseph, The
Book of the Holy Graal, The Early Prose Merlin, The Pulgate
Merlin and the romance of Lancelot of the Lake. The long
introduction is still interesting and valuable reading. Paulin
Paris considered that The Metrical Joseph was founded on a
Breton Gospel-legend, and that the original Graal text was
a Latin Gradual.
Francisque Michel and Thomas Wright : Vie de Merlin, attribute
a Geoffroy de Monmouth, 1837.
The elaborate introduction is useful for Merlin literature
and for allusions to the prophet in other poems and romances.
San Marte, i.e. A. Schulz, Der Mythus van Heiligen Graal, 1837,
regarded at one time as the best survey of the subject ;
the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, in modern
German, 1836-1842; Die Arthur-Sage und die Mahrchen
des rothen Buchs von Hergest, 1841 ; Die Sagen von Merlin,
1853 ; with other works and numerous contributions to
periodical literature.
San Marte considered : (a] that the Lapis Exilis was the
701
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
Stone of the Lord, which at the beginning of all things was
with God ; (b) that the passage of the Graal to the Kingdom
of Prester John was itself a suggestion of heresy, interior
Asia being filled with numerous Christian sects ; (c) that
Wolfram depicted a Christian Brotherhood, or Kingdom
of the Faithful, apart from pope and priesthood ; (d) that the
Graal was not a Christian relic ; and (e) that Wolfram's Pro-
vencal Kyot may have been Guiot de Provins, that monk of
Clairvaux who wrote the Bible Guiot and had himself
visited Jerusalem.
Karl Simrock : The Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach
translated into modern German, 1842, immediately after
the completion of San Marte's enterprise and traversing his
most important veiws ; Parzival und Titurel, 1857.
This writer maintained : (a) That the original Graal
Legend was connected with St. John Baptist, whose head
was enshrined at Constantinople and was used to maintain
the life of a dying emperor in the eleventh century ; (b] that
the Templar connections of the Parsifal were a mere re-
flection ; (c) that the Templeisen were the Knights of San
Salvador de Mont R6al — founded in 1120 ; and (d) that the
Graal and its veneration suggest the Gnostic body called
Christians of St. John.
T. H. de la Villemarque : Les Romans de la Table Ronde et les
contes des anciens Bretons, 1842 ; Contes Populaires de la
Bretagne, 2 vols., 1846 (fourth edition) ; Myrdhinn ou FEn-
chanteur Merlin (new edition), 1861.
In the last work Merlin is treated as a mythological,
historical, legendary and romantic character. It is enter-
taining, but largely fantastic, and at the present day it is
difficult to accept anything advanced by this writer without
careful verification. He considered that a pagan tradition
was received from the bards and, in combination with a
particular presentation of the Eucharistic mystery, was passed
on to the romancers of northern France. The Graal is
Celtic, and the word signifies a basin.
Reichel : Studien zu Parzival, 1856.
This work was written in opposition to San Marte, and
it denied that the theology of the twelfth century should be
applied to the interpretation of the poem.
Louis Moland : Origines litteraires de la France, 1862.
(a) The old history, the high history, was contained in a
Latin book ; (b) it embodied that chivalrous ideal which it
was sought to realise in the Temple ; (c) this was con-
702
Appendix
nected with another idea, namely, that of communion apart ;
(d) the vast cycle formed a systematic allegory ; (e) but
folk-lore intervened and a strange admixture followed ; (f) it is
doubtful whether the books of the Holy Graal can rank as
orthodox; (g) beneath the allegory there are tendances suspectes ;
(h) the errors diffused among the Templars may have been
reflected into works which evidently embody their principles.
S. Baring-Gould : Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 1867.
At the period of its publication the essay on the Sangreal,
contained herein, provided a certain knowledge in a populai
form, but at this day it is without office or appeal.
F. G. Bergmann : The San Greal, 1870.
I think that this account was the first to offer in English
an outline of the Later Titurel, by A. von Scharfenberg.
The two sources of all Graal romances are the Quest-poem
of Guyot and a Graal-history written in Latin by Walter
Map. The tract is translated from the French, but the
fact is not specified.
Gustav Oppert : Der Presbyter Johannes in Sage und Geschichte, 1870.
An interesting summary of the known facts concerning this
mythical personage.
Zarncke : Zur Geschichte der Gralsage, 1876.
So far from being Proven9al or Celtic, Graal literature
has its source in the legends concerning Joseph of Ari-
mathaea. The metrical romance of De Borron is the earliest
in point of time and Chretien drew therefrom, but also from
the Quest of Galahad, which itself was preceded by some form
of The Book of the Holy Graal. Guiot was an invention of
Wolfram.
A. Birch-Hirschfeld : Die Sage, vom Gral, 1877 ; Ueber die den
provenzalischen Troubadours des xii. und xiii. Jahrunderts, 1878.
The first work created a strong impression, and exercised
great influence at its period. The history of Robert de
Borron preceded Chretien, who drew from De Borron's Per-
ceval-Quest, on which Gautier also depended. The Longer
Prose Perceval drew from the Quest of Galahad and The Book
of the Holy Graal. The Graal is not Celtic, and Robert de
Borron followed the Vindicta Sahatoris and the Gesta Pilati.
His Sacred Vessel is one of sacramental grace. There is a
powerful defence of the Didot Perceval, in which De Borron
ingarnered Breton legends. The source of Wolfram was
Chretien, and him only.
E. Martin : The decisive findings of Birch-Hirschfeld were
opposed by this writer in a German Journal of Archeology, 1878,
7°3
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
and in Zur Gralsage, Unterschungen, 1 880. He maintained the
Celtic origin of the legend, the possibility of a Latin version,
the unlikelihood that the Dldot Perceval belongs to the De
Borron trilogy, and that the derivation of Wolfram was
from a source other than Chretien.
C. Domanig : Parzival-Studien (Two Parts), 1878— 80.
A defence of Wolfram as an adherent of the Catholic faith.
G. Botticher : Die Wolfram Literatur sett Lachmann, 1880.
A consideration of the argument for and against the in-
debtedness of Wolfram to no source but that of Chretien
and tending to the conclusion that another source is probable.
J. Van Santen : Zur Beurtheilung Wolfram von Eschenbach, 1882.
A hostile criticism of the poet's ethical position, founded,
however, not on the limitations of the Parsifal, but on
Wolfram's general concessions to the morality of his time.
W. Hertz : Sage vom Parziva/ und dem Gral, 1882.
The , motive of the legends must be sought in the anti-
Papal spirit of the British Church, within which it was, for
this and other reasons, developed.
Paul Steinbach : fber dem Einfluss des Crestien de Troies auf die
altenglische Literatur, 1885.
An exhaustive study of the debt due to Chretien and
Breton tradition by the Thornton Syr Percyvelle.
M. Gaster : Jewish Sources of and Parallels to the Early English
Metrical Legends of King Arthur and Merlin, 1887.
The contention is that the commerce between women
and demons has its authority in the Talmud, to which I
might add that the legendary orgies of the mediaeval Black
Sabbath have some of their roots therein. I do not think
that comparisons of this kind serve much purpose.
Gaston Paris : La Litterature fran^aise au moyen-age, 1888 ; Histoire
Litter air e de la France, vol. xxx., 1888.
I cite two instances only from the long literary record of this
excellent and charming scholar. It is impossible in a brief
note to speak of his whole achievement. I will specify only
one point with which I have just made acquaintance, and this
is that, in his opinion, as independently in my own, the begin-
ning and the end of Gerbert's alternative sequel to the Conte
del Graal may have suffered alteration.
Alfred Nutt : Studies on the Legend of the Holy Graal, 1888.
The sub-title adds — "with special reference to the hypothesis
of its Celtic origin." It was this work which paved a
way for the criticism of the Graal literature in England, and
I am certain that no more welcome offering could be made to
704
Appendix
scholars everywhere than the issue of a new edition, with such
extension and revision as would be warranted by the present
state of our knowledge. Mr. Nutt has done more than any
one in this country to promote the acceptance of the Celtic
source in legend, but he has the gift of treating all the com-
petitive hypotheses on every side of the subject with modera-
tion and fairness. He regards the De Borron story as the start-
ing-point of Christian transformation, and of late years he has
shown some disposition to accept the possibility of Templar
influence on the development of the literature. In 1902
Mr. Nutt published a pamphlet on the Legends of the Holy
Graa/ which offers a serviceable summary.
Professor Rhys : Studies in the Arthurian Legend, 1891.
A development of Welsh analogies, a theory of Celtic
origins, tinctured with the old dream' of solar myths at the
root of many of the stories.
Richard Heinzel : Ueber die franzoezischen Gralromane, 1891.
An elaborate and careful examination. The Longer Prose
Perceval is said to depend from Gerbert, and the priority of
the Quest is rejected.
G. M. Harper : The Legend of the Holy Graal, 1893.
Though it can be scarcely regarded as a work of original re-
search there is here an useful resumption of results obtained by
scholarship, showing an acquaintance with the original docu-
ments of the literature. The Graal, as typifying the Eucharist,
was the beginning, middle and end of all the cycles. "It is
as if a Divine hand had been holding the hands of all the
writers of these books."
Miss Jessie L. Weston : I have mentioned already the English
translation of the Parsifal, which has only one disadvantage,
being its unfortunate metrical form. Since the period of its
publication, Miss Weston has written : (i) The Legend of
Gawain, 1897 ; (2) The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac, 1900 ;
(3) The Three Days' Tournament, 1902 ; (4) The Legend of
Perceval, vol. i., 1906. These are individual monographs, and
the two last are of particular and high importance. Miss
Weston has also translated several Arthurian texts not in-
cluded in the great collection of Malory, and among these I
will mention (5) the episode of Moricn, 1901, derived from
the Dutch Lancelot, and (6) Sir Gawain at the Grail Castle,
1903, being extracts from the Conte del Graal, Diu Crone, by
Heinrich, and the prose Lancelot. The others are not of our
concern exactly.
Among English writers, Miss Weston is our foremost textual
70S 2Y
'The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
scholar in respect of the literature of the Holy Graal. In the
Legend of Sir Lancelot she has dwelt upon the necessity of col-
lating the numerous manuscripts of this vast romance with a
view to the production of a sound text. Whether she her-
self projects this undertaking there is no means of knowing ;
perhaps it would be possible only to a concerted effort, but
there is no single student who is better fitted for the task. In
the Legend of Perceval she has made an important first-hand
study of texts now extant of the Conte del Graaly and the
results are with us. It is to her that we owe the discovery
of the Fecamp reference in Manessier. The place of that
abbey in the reliquary-history of the Precious Blood has
been known, of course, to students since the collection of
documents included by Leroux de Lincy in his account of
the ancient religious foundation.
Dr. Sebastian Evans : In Quest of the Holy Graal, 1898.
An amazing dream, which identifies Innocent III. with
the Rich Fisherman, the Emperor with the King of Castle
Mortal, St. Dominic with Perceval, the Interdict of 1208
with the languishment and enchantments of Britain, and
the question which should have been asked, but was not, with
an omission of St. Dominic to secure the exemption of the
Cistercians from certain effects of the Interdict. Lancelot is
the elder Simon de Montfort ; Gawain isFulke of Marseilles ;
Alain le Gros is Alanus de Insulis, the universal Doctor ;
Yglais, the mother of Perceval, is Holy Church. The Graal
is, of course, the Eucharist, which is denied to Logres. The
speculation is founded on the Longer Prose Perceval^ so that
no distraction is caused by the presence of Blanchefleur, but
as all French texts of quest speak of the removal or intern-
ment of the Sacred Vessel, it is a pity that the ingenuity which
has woven this wonderful web should have passed such a point
in silence. I fear that in all truth Dr. Evans has not succeeded
in creating more conviction than, I suppose, has Dr. Vercoutre ;
but he has gifts in literature, gifts of entertainment and gifts of
subtlety which are wanting to his French confrere.
Dr. Wendelin Foerster — who projected a complete edition of the
works of Chretien de Troyes — has published several texts,
including (i) Erec und Enid^ 1896; (2) Cligh, 1901;
(3) Tvain, 1902.
As regards the Conte del Graa/y he considered that its
confessed prototype, the book belonging to Count Philip of
Flanders, was not a quest of the Sacred Vessel but a prose
account of the Palladium.
Appendix
Paul Hagan : Der Graal, 1900.
This study has been welcomed warmly by scholars ; it is
valuable in many respects, but more particularly for the.
German cycle, Guiot de Provence and his eastern elements
Dr. Hagan suggests a Persian origin for the name Flegi-
tanis = Felek thani = sphtera altera.
Dr. A. T. Vercoutre : Origine et Genese de la Legende du Saint
Graal, 1901.
This tract claims to offer the solution of a literary prob-
lem. The legend of the Graal is based upon an error
of translation. The supposed Vessel, or Vas, is the Celtic
Vasso, and the romances really commemorate the Gaulish
Temple of Puy de Dome, mentioned by Gregory of Tours.
It was originally Gaulish and dedicated to Lug, but it was
Roman subsequently, and was then sacred to Mercury. It
was a place of initiation and as such hidden from the world,
like the Graal. The Temple was unearthed in 1873. This
appears to be a frantic hypothesis.
W. A. Nitze : The Old French Graal Romance, 1902.
Here is an attempt to determine more fully the relation
of the Longer Prose Perceval to Chretien and his continuators.
Mr. Nitze agrees that we have no certain knowledge as to
the original form of Gerbert's poem.
C. Macdonald : Origin of the Legend of the Holy Graal, 1903.
This is, unfortunately, an introduction only to a large
projected work, but the death of the author intervened.
There is an interesting account of early apocryphal and later
traditions concerning Joseph, Nicodemus, Pilate, Veronica,
&c. The intention was — at the term of a full inquiry into
the documentary sources — to consider whether the Graal
tradition at its core was known under another form before it
was adapted to Christian symbolism, " having been borrowed
from a system of which it was a legitimate and undoubted
growth and which presented many points in common with
the hagiology and ritual of both eastern and western
churches."
Dorothy Kempe : Legend of the Holy Graal, 1905.
This pamphlet was written to accompany the History of
the Holy Graal of Lovelich or Lonelich. The prospectus
of the Early English Text Society describes it as a capital
summary. It is a reflection of previous English authorities.
707
The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
PART III
PHASES OF INTERPRETATION
The few works which will be included in this section lie
outside the ordinary range of scholarship, and for this reason —
whatever their merits or defects — I have placed them under a
sub-title which is designed to mark their particular distinction
of motive.
I. Eugene Aroux : (a) Dante, Heretique, Revolutionnairey et
Socialiste : Revelations (Fun Catholique sur le Moyen Age,
1854 ; (b) Les Mysteres de la Chevalerie et de F Amour
Platonique au Moyen Age, 1858.
There are others, but these will suffice, and I have dealt
with the author's standpoint sufficiently in the text of the
present work. As instances of criticism moving under heavy
spells of sorcery, as phenomena of reverie in research, I know
few things so profoundly entertaining. The section entitled
La Massenie du Saint Graal in the later work deserves and
would receive a crown in any Academy of Fantasy.
II. F. Naelf: Opinions Religieuses des Templiers, 1890.
The Graal is the symbol of mystic wisdom and of the
communion between God and Man. It is affirmed that the
Templars perpetuated a secret doctrine which did not perish
with them, if they indeed perished ; it passed afterwards
through Masonry and is there still embedded. The position
of the Johannine sect is considered in the same connection.
On our own part, we have already appreciated and set aside
these interesting views.
III. Emile Burnouf : Le Vase Sacre et ce qu'il contienty 1896.
The legend of the Holy Graal contains certain essential
elements of the universal cultus which prevailed among the
Aryan peoples — which elements are identical with those of
India, Persia and Greece. The romances are not important
for the religious history of the Sacred Vessel ; for that in its
Christian aspects we must have recourse to the liturgical
texts and ceremonies of the Catholic Church. The true
legend of the Graal goes back, however, through Christian
times, and thence through the great faiths of the East, to
the Vedic Hymns, wherein its explanation is found — other-
wise, in that vase which contains Agni under the appearance
of Soma,
708
Appendix
IV. Isabel Cooper-Oakley : Traces of a Hidden Tradition in
Masonry and Medieval Mysticism, 1 900.
Mrs. Cooper-Oakley's chief authorities are Gabriele Ros-
setti and Eugene Aroux. This is in respect of her
views on Masonic tradition, but unfortunately neither of
these writers was acquainted at first-hand with the subject,
seeing that neither were Masons. As regards the literature
of the Holy Graal, a considerable acquaintance is shown
with the German cycle, though the writer prefers to depend
on her somewhat doubtful precursors rather than on her
own impressions. In this way she reflects the opinions of
Burnouf as expressed in Le Pase Sacre. She has written
some interesting papers, but they do not carry us further
than the pre-occupations of those whom she cites. She is
right on the fact that there is assuredly a tradition in
Masonry and a tradition in the literature of the Holy Graal,
but on the nature of that tradition she is of necessity far
from the goal because those are far whom she follows.
A. L. Cleather and Basil Crump : Parsifal, Lohengrin and the
Legend of the Holy Graal, 1 904.
We have here a summary of Wagner's two operatic
dramas from the standpoint of Wagner himself, or, as the
sub-title says, "described and interpreted" in accordance
with his own writings. The Graal in Wagner is like the
Arthurian chronicles in Tennyson, a high and uplifting
ceremonial, but not more faithful to the matter of the
German cycle than is the English poet to Malory whom he
followed. In their account of the sacramental legend, apart
from Wagner, Miss Cleather and her collaborator have
been guided in part by accepted critics of the literature, like
Nutt and Simrock, whose views they have combined with
those of Mrs. Cooper-Oakley and her sources. It is said
that, according to tradition, the abode of the Holy Graal is
on a lofty mountain of India — being, I suppose, a reference
to the realm of Prester John. It came also originally from
the East, probably from the Himalayas. It connects with
Johannine tradition and Templar chivalry.
It should be added that I published in seven successive issues
of Mr. Ralph Shirley's monthly magazine, The Occult Review, some
articles on the Graal and its literature which constituted a first
draft or summary of the present work. They appeared from
March to September 1907. Two of these issues also contain
some particulars concerning an alleged discovery of the Holy
Graal at Glastonbury, with remarks upon the claim and its value.
709
INDEX
ABDIAS, 666
Adam de St. Victor, 663
Adonis and Tammuz, 488
Aesh Mezareph, 537
Alain and Alain le Gros, 135, 247,
248, 254, 257, 267, 270, 273, 306,
310, 313, 334
Albigenses and connected sects,
524 et seq.
Alchemy ; for interpretation and
Graal analogies, 533-550; for
minor references, 62, 65, 532, 629,
685
Alphasan, 306, 307, 313
Amadis of Gaul, 407
Amfortas, 316, 378, 381, 391, 394
Anjou, House of, 393, 418, 446, 657,
658
Ark of the Graal, 291, 292, 293, 294,
297. 315. 655
Aries, Council of, 447
Arthur, King, his court and the
Round Table, 7, 185, 186, 188,
189, 211, 216, 225, 267, 270, 325,
347. 379, 380, 388, 409, 422, 423,
443, 444, 455, 505
Ashmole, Elias, 588, 60 1
Augustine, St., 434, 459 ; the
Great Doctor, 605
Avalon, 152, 272, 312, 328, 416, 442
BALYN and Balan ; for the story of
the Dolorous Stroke, 328-329 ;
for minor references, 297, 313,
359
Ban of Benoic, King, 314, 332, 333,
335. 353
Bardic Sanctuary, 176
Bartolocci, Julius, 421
Bede, Venerable, 29
Belianis of Greece, Don, 406
Bible Guiot, 426
Blaise, 260, 262, 324, 499, 653
Blanchefleur, 187, 208, 209, 226,
234. 38i
Blihis, Master, 499, 666, 685
Book of Celestial Chivalry, 406
Book of Thoth, 60 1
Book of the Holy Graal, 57, 59, 63,
68, 81, 86, 87, 97, 99, 101, 104,
106, 109, 113, 116, 118, 120, 122,
126, 129, 132, 135, 137, 147, 220,
221, 235, 250, 266, 28l-3l6, 318,
321, 330, 335, 337, 344, 352, 360,
367, 403, 441, 450, 455, 474, 494,
495. 499. 506, 622, 642, 651, 670,
671, 672
Bors, 343, 360, 369, 470, 494, 509
Bran, The Blessed, 138, 157, 178
Brons, 106, 136, 146, 158, 247, 253,
254, 273, 312
CADWALADR, 173, 177, 442, 443,
453. 458
Capgrave, 92
Castle Mortal, King of, 345, 656
Castle of Souls, 345, 346
Cauldron of Bendigeid Vran, 173 ;
of Ceridwen, 171, 176, 178 ; of
the Dagda, 171, 172, 173, 178
Celidoine, 305, 334
Celtic and British Church, 69, 91,
469, 648, 649, 652, 655. See
Book VIII. passim
Chess-Board Episode, 191, 214, 216
Chevalier aux deux £ptes, 329
Chretien de Troyes, 49, 56, 80, 93,
113, 116, 120, 121, 126, 139, 146,
153, 198, 205, 207, 208, 209, 236,
237, 499
Chrysostom, St. John, 438, 439, 451
Columba, St., 439, 440, 445
Conte del Graal, for plenary descrip-
tion and summary, 198-240 ; for
other and minor references, 54,
55, 60, 86, 87, 93, 104, 113, 116,
117, 120, 126, 129, 135, 137, 139,
146, 147, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159,
160, 162, 164, 182, 188, 269, 270,
316, 336, 337. 339. 34L 343. 344.
377. 378, 381, 422, 424, 426, 479,
499, 646, 648, 653, 672
Corbenic, 135, 136, 306, 307, 320,
321, 353. 357. 422, 511, 654, 681
Crusades, 46
Cup of Tregaron, Holy, 441
710
Index
DAVID, St., 437, 438, 441, 443, 444,
445, 447, 453, 455
De Borron, 49, 55, 57, 62, 71, 95,
96, 105, 106, 108, 109, 116, 119,
137, 147, 155, 204, 206, 209, 215,
221, 235, 282, 283, 287, 288, 308,
311, 312, 315, 323, 335, 358, 366,
390, 391, 499, 501. See Book IV.
passim
De Borron, Helie, 323
Didot Perceval, for descriptive ac-
count, 265-274 ; for minor refer-
ences, 56, 64, 86, 96, 97, 106, 116,
117, 122, 126, 129, 137, 139, 153,
156, 159, 160, 162, 164, 182, 224,
288, 316, 319, 337, 342, 343, 377,
378, 381, 383, 628, 646, 648, 650,
654
Dionysius, St., 452
Dish, The Hallowed, 88, 114, 115,
1 1 6, 139, 140, 141, 600, 604, and
Book II., V., § D
Diu Crdne and Heinrich, for descrip-
tive account, 407-414 ; for minor
references, 61, 102, 103, 119, 125,
132, 144, 150, 156, 160, 163, 504,
673
Dolorous Stroke, 149, 313, 367.
See Balyn and Balan
Don Quixote, 406
Dutch Lancelot, 51, 200, 421-424
EARTHLY Paradise, 133, 228, 234,
270, 346
Eckartshausen, K. von, 630, 633,
636, 640
Eleazar, 320, 362, 369
Elizabel of Arragon, 418
Epiclesis, 172, 438, 449, 457, 535,
616, 655, 671, 685
Esplandian, 406
Eucharist, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27,
28, 29, 31, 66, 291, 300, 389, 426,
451, 454, 474, 475, 485, 487, 492,
535. 544. 599, 605, 625, 635, 637,
647, 649, 655, 670-673
Evalach, 290, 297, 298, 300, 314,
315, 352, 362
Evans, Dr. Sebastian, 12
FEAST of the Most Holy Trinity,
286
Fecamp, Abbey of, 34, 35, 36, 402,
453, 503
Feeding Dish, 5, 10, 19, 104-113,
255, 331, 659
Feirfeis, 384, 387, 419
Fish, Symbolic, 106, 108, 443
Fisher King, 134, 136, 146, 161, 205,
206, 215, 218, 219, 231, 267, 271,
272, 313. 314, 345. 347. 349, 35O,
352, 381, 409, 497, 499, 645. 657.
679
Flegetanis, 394, 403
Fouque, La Motte, 492
Frimutel, 378, 394
GAFFAREL, 404
Galahad, for the French Quest,
352-365 ; for the Welsh Quest,
365-370 ; for other versions, 405-
407 ; for discursive and minor re-
ferences, 58, 59, 64, 83, 85, 86, 87,
99, 100, 101, 106, in, 113, 116,
123, 127, 130, 132, 137, 140, 148,
149, 152, 155, 159, 160, 161, 162,
165, 174, 198, 201, 213, 215, 297,
301, 314, 320, 323, 331, 335, 340,
341, 370, 378, 418, 453, 454, 455.
457, 460, 470, 472, 474, 476, 479,
493, 494, 501, 504, 506, 512, 513,
629, 642, 647, 648, 652, 653, 654,
657, 672, 673, 677, 682, 683
Galahad le Fort, 311
Gamuret, 378, 387
Gareth, 423
Gautier de Doulens, 36,93, 105, 117,
121, 126, 129, 135, 140, 147, 154,
158, 209-218, 219, 377, 409. 457
Gawain, 61, 124, 140, 146, 147, 151,
191, 200, 209, 210, 235-240, 268,
337-339, 347, 3^9, 3^2, 383, 407-
414, 423, 426, 469, 470
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 317
Gerbert, 93, 94, 105, 121, 126, 135,
188, 225-235, 343, 377, 457
Glastonbury, 91, 444, 454, 455
Graal, Holy, passim throughout the
work and special references as
follows ; a legend of the soul, 6 ;
connection with the Last Supper,
7 ; sacramental value, 1 1 ; its
transits, ib. ; allegorical aspects
of the quests, 15 ; orthodox
position of the claim, 16 ; as a
reliquary, 28, 99, 412 ; its litera-
ture and the life of devotion, 45,
46 ; description of the vessel, 93,
94 ; Graal and Eucharist, 95, 97 ;
as a ciborium, 95, 98, 103 ; mean-
ing of the word, 95 ; an eternal
Eucharist, 98 ; one hypothesis,
102, 103 ; in the Castle pageant,
139-144; Herb of the Graal,
326 ; the Graal Dove, 205, 337 ;
as a Reliquary, 103, 510 ; an image
711
Index
of the Divine Mystery within the
Church, 478 ; its departure, 161
et seq., 171, 350, 364
Grand St. Graal. See Book of the
Holy Graal
Greater Chronicles, 53, 59, 80, 103,
124, 135, 138, 145, 158, 205, 360,
436, 654. See Book V.
Great Experiment, 615, 626, 633,
656, and Book VIII., 3
Gregory of Tours, 39, 41
Gregory the Great, 480
Guinevere, 185, 335, 339, 347
Guiot de Provence, 345, 353, 356,
393, 394, 395. 397~4O4, 425. 426,
427, 498, 500, 599, 644, 657
Gurnemanz, 380
Gyron le Courtois, 502
HARDYNG, Chronicle of, 60
Hawker, R. S., 12
Head on Salver, 43, 294
Helayne, 320, 339, 353, 511, 512
Helinandus, Chronicle of, 92, 95
Henry II., 426, 446, 455, 649
Herzeleide, 378, 379, 382, 384
Higgins, Godfrey, 179
House of Doctrine, 454, 491
Howitt, William, 460
Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, 204
Hugo de St. Victor, 47
IMPLICITS, Lesser, 72, 674, 675
Irem, 420
Isidore of Seville, St., 663
JACOBUS de Voragine, 38
Januarius, St., 203
Jerome, St., 666
Johannine Tradition, 448, 457, 506,
661-668
ohn Damascene, 29
ohn of Glastonbury, 92
ohn of the Cross, St., 497
ohn of Tynemouth, 92, 103
ohn the Baptist, St., 42-44
oseph of Arimathaea, 33, 49, 55,
56, 62, 81, 83, 91, 92, 94, 98, 101,
106, 107, 117, 123, 135, 136, 146,
245-257, 261, 289, 290, 291, 310,
312, 319, 321, 323, 329, 334, 353,
361, 368, 370, 402, 443, 455, 502,
503, 505, 642, 672
Joseph II., 59, 69, 70, 122, 220,
289, 291, 292, 296, 297, 298, 299,
306, 308, 309, 312, 313, 315, 322,
33i. 334- 363, 492, 499, 652, 674
Joshua, 306, 307
KABALISM, for Tradition in Israel,
550-555 ; for Zoharic allusions,
70, 403, 404, 407 ; for other
references, 482, 603, 617, 629,
656
Kay the Seneschal, 185, 186, 189,
382
Kilwinning, Canongate, 587
Klingsor, 345, 386, 387, 392
Kondwiramour, 381, 387, 418
Kundrie, 382, 383, 385, 386
LAFONTAINE, 178
Lance, as a Graal Hallow, 88, 101,
117-119, 129, 154, 157, 159, 183,
192, 194, 205, 220, 237, 270, 409.
See Passion Relics
Lancelot, for the prose romance,
330-340 ; for allusions to the
Knight and his story, 58, 106,
no, 118, 123, 127, 130, 135, 138,
142, 155, 200, 314, 318, 319, 320,
323, 326, 355, 356, 383, 385,
407, 422, 501, 512, 629, 651, 672,
687
Lapis Exilis, 389, 395, 396, 443,
571-576
Lapis Judaicus, 401
Launfal, 240
Lay of the Great Fool, 53, 174
Lazarus, 116
Leodegan of Carmelide, 327
Lesser Chronicles, see 243-274, and
for other references, 53, 71, 80,
99, 103, 122, 135, 138, 145, 157,
261, 282, 321, 322, 457, 653,
655
Lesser Holy Graal, 56, 63, 86, 87,
96, 97, 105, 251, 287, 288, 289,
324, 453, 456, 505, 649; see
also 255-257
Leucius, 666
Lohengrin, Romance of, 416, 421
Lombard, Peter, 25, 482
Longer Prose Perceval, 58, 59, 86,
87, 88, 99, 100, 104, 106, in, 115,
116, 118, 120, 123, 131, 136, 137,
143, 144, 150, 162, 164, 174, 175,
182, 199, 201, 206, 213, 235, 240,
286, 322, 327, 330, 337, 339, 341,
342, 355, 377. 383, 402, 425, 442,
454, 457, 470, 473, 479. 481, 493.
494, 495, 499, 500, 501, 504, 629,
642, 647, 648, 651, 653, 657, 672,
677, 683
Lost Book, 498-507, 675, 676
Lost Word, 164, 607
Louis XVI., 595
712
Index
Loupoukine, 630, 635, 636, 640,
665
Lucifer, Crown of, 400, 401, 417,
480, 481
Lufamour, The Lady, 196, 197
Lully, Raymond, 406
Luther, 45
Mabinogion, Welsh, 50, 173, 174,
175 ; Mabinogi of Peredur, 49,
53, 181-193, 202, 204, 205, 207,
209, 212, 269, 351, 380, 458
Manessier, 93, 105, 117, 121, 126,
135, 147, 154, 159, 219-225, 226,
231. 235, 377, 417, 457, 479
Map, Walter, 57, 221, 235, 308, 504
Marcion, 528, 68 1
Martinism, 602, 636 ; Saint Martin,
12
Mary's Chapel, 580, 587
Masonry, for the Secret Tradition,
Book IX., VIII. ; for other refer-
ences, 490, 491, 536, 579, 606,
629, 631, 632, 669, 681, 683, 684
Mass. See Eucharist
Melchisedech, 98, 505, 541
Meliadus de Lttonnois, 502
Melyas de Lyle, 320
Merlin, the prophet, 49, 50, 58,
217 ; the texts generally, 98,
135 ; Early History, 56, 58, 64, 96,
105, 129, 258-264, 273, 288, 317,
324, 326, 450, 628, 649 ; Hutk
Merlin, 57, 58, 99, 118, 123, 135,
137, 138, 148, 284, 297, 318, 322-
330, 33L 332, 333. 334, 498, 676 ;
Vulgate Merlin, 57, 58, 99, 123,
135, 137, I38> !48> 215, 266, 314,
318, 320, 325, 326, 360, 385
Molai, Jacques de, 595
Molinos, 406
Montbeliard, Walter, 204, 245, 499
Mont Salvatch, 136, 356, 421, 475,
479, 511, 68 1
Mor drains. See Evalach
Morgan le Fay, 325, 476
Mors O sculi, 495
Morte cT Arthur, of Malory, 10, 12,
15, 365, 369. 370, 405, 501 ;
English metrical romance, 50
Moses, 72, 247, 253, 254, 264, 268,
273, 308, 309, 335, 360, 650, 675
Mozarabic Rite, 452
Mysterium Fidei, 20, 615, 624, and
493-497
NASCIENS, 300, 301, 303, 304, 305,
334
Nasciens II., 319, 334, 360, 379
Nennius, 92
Nicodemus, 91, 101, 246, 251
OGIER the Dane, 190
Origen, 528
PALACE of Adventure. See Corbenic
Palamedes, 405
Palmerin of England, 502
Paris, Paulin, 502
Parsifal, the German, and Wolfram
von Eschenbach, 60, 65, 80, 102,
112, 119, 125, 132, 143, 150, 156,
160, 164, 175, 188, 206, 235, 240,
250, 273, 321, 336, 337, 343, 356,
400, 401, 406, 409, 415, 422, 424,
425, 450, 453, 457, 459, 474, 479,
480, 529, 531, 653, 673, 683 ; and
Book VI., I.
Paschal Dish, 93, 94, 97, 103, 289,
330
Passion Relics and Hallows ; for the
Holy Cincture, 40, 41 ; Crown of
Thorns, 39, 40, 115 ; Lance, 19,
34, 38, 39, 88, 101, 117-119,
139, 154, 157, 159, 183, 193, 194,
205, 220, 237, 270, 294, 347, 409 ;
Longinus, 7, 329 ; Sacred Nails,
40, 115, 116, 294; Pincers, 115 ;
see also 28, 36, 40, 44, 45, 46,
299, 400, 448
Pelican, 392
Pelleas, 329
Pellehan, King, 149, 159, 160, 321,
329
Pellenore, King, 321
Pelles, King, 135, 137, 149, 221,
306, 320, 325, 346, 353, 362, 363,
368, 369, 370, 506, 679
Perceval, for minor references, 83,
146, 147, 150, 153, 327; Per-
ceval's sister, 149, 187, 213, 214,
226, 232, 233, 269, 350, 361, 362
Perlesvaux. See Longer Prose Per-
ceval
Peter de Avila, 406
Peter of Lyons, 526
Petrus, 107, 108, 247, 248, 253, 254,
281, 310, 311, 312
Philip of Flanders, Count, 204, 500
Philip, St., 455
Philosofine, 233, 235
Phoenix, 395, 401, 403, 417
Pilate, Pontius, 91, 245, 246, 248,
249, 251, 289
Potvin, M. C., 200, 220
Precious Blood, 31, 32, 33, 34, 91,
713
2 Z
Index
119, 203, 329, 352, 455, 475, 485,
507, Sio, 530
Prester, John, n, 387, 419, 420,
421, 621, 665
QUESTING Beast, 327
Question, for summary account,
152-157 ; for suppression and
final acting, see Perceval quests,
passim ; for some minor refer-
ences, 82, 146, 147, 150, 151, 159,
160, 345, 646, 658, 673
Questiones DruidiccB, 673
RAGON, 588, 590, 591, 601
Red Book of Hergest, 181, 193
Red Knight, 185, 195, 208, 380
Regeneration, 633, 635
Rhys ap Tewdr, 177
Rosicrucian Mystery, 151, 596, 632,
669, 684, 685
Rosenroth, Knorr von, 537
Rusticien de Pise, 51
Ruysbroeck, 83, 481, 683
SACRAMENTS, Seven, 20, 22
Sacro Catino, 33, 37
Saone vel Sone de Nansay, 398
Sarracinte, 300
Sarras, 27, 102, 133, 136, 289, 290,
362, 363, 364, 370
Secret Words, viii., 62, 66, 71, 80,
81, 119, 248, 256, 438, 449, 450,
504. 535. 567, 622, 645, 649, 650,
655, 671, 675
Seraphe. See Nasciens
Siege Perilous, 123, 232, 262, 263,
308, 309, 316, 359
Sigune, 379, 382, 416, 417
Simeon, 72, 308, 310, 335, 360, 361
Simon de Montfort, 527
Solomon, Ship of, 149, 301-304,
361, 363, 364
Southey, Robert, 502
Stone of the Graal, n, 388-390,
395. 396, 400, 401, 403, 417, 480
Super- Apostolical Succession, viii.,
64, 67, 69, 70, 71, 81, 295, 434,
444, 447, 450, 451, 504, 621, 622,
671
Swan Knight, 234, 416
Swedenborg, 249
Sword, Hallowed, for general varia-
tions, 119-125; for particular
references, 19, 88,42, 43, 44, 114,
116, 123, 139, 140, 141, 147, 154,
194, 205, 220, 238, 301, 304, 307,
362, 364
Syr Percyvelle, 174, 193-197, 202,
209, 35L 383
TALIESIN, pseudo-, 177
Talmud, 70
Tavolo Ritonda, 52
Templars, for general accounts of,
some claims in their respect, 555-
566 ; for casual references, 393,
396, 401, 595, 632, 660, 664
Tennyson and the Holy Graal, 8, 9,
12, 13
Thecolithos, 401
Thomas, St., 25
Thomas a Becket, St., 660
Titurel, for the romance of Albrecht
von Scharfenberg, 410-421 ; for
minor references, 60, 132, 163,
164, 378, 387, 394, 479, 531, 653
Titurisone, 418
Toledo, 393, 396, 402, 437
Trevrezent, 388
Tristram and his story, 336, 405
Turba Philosophorum, 537
UTHER Pendragon, 262-264, 326,
327. 332, 354
VAUGHAN, Thomas, 496
Veronica, 41, 42, 116, 246
Vespasian, 136, 246, 289
Villanueva, Jayme de, 427
Villemarque, 175, 176
Virginity, 241, 342, 471, 472
Vivienne, The Lady of the Lake,
329. 333. 334
Volney, 179
Volto Santo, 41, 42, 246
WAGNER, 13
Welsh Quest, 164, 365-370
Werner, Ludwig, 640
William of Malmesbury, 444
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON 6* Co.
Edinburgh & London
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